Belt Webbing Chair by Jens Risom for Knoll, 1941

Danish-American architect-designer Jens Risom was born in Copenhagen in 1916, the son of a nationally renowned architect of the Nordic Classicism style. Between 1935 and 1938, he trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Ole Wanscher and Kaare Klint, alongside classmates Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen. For a short time following his studies, he took on furniture and interior designer projects for the Copenhagen-based architectural firm Ernst Kuhn. He then moved briefly to Stockholm, where he worked for Nordiska Kompaniet and met Alvar Aalto and Bruno Mathsson. Around 1939, he immigrated to New York with ambitions to introduce the Scandinavian modernist approach to the US furniture market.

Risom’s arrival in the US coincided with the years of materials shortages brought on by the war. As a result, Risom was unable to secure a position in a furniture company, and, instead, found work designing textiles for decorator Dan Cooper. Eager to do more, he soon convinced Cooper to expand into the furniture market, and together they found projects with young, progressive architects like Ed Stone and George Nelson. In 1939-40, Ed Stone was invited to create Collier Magazine’s House of Ideas pavilion at Rockefeller Center as part of the New York World’s Fair, and Risom designed all of the furniture.

Around 1941, Risom met Hans Knoll, a German-born entrepreneur in the furniture industry who had a showroom on Madison Avenue dedicated to rather lackluster furnishings. Sharing a dream to do something more vanguard, they joined forces and set off on a four-month tour of the US in search of design inspiration. By 1942, Knoll launched Hans Knoll Furniture Company with Risom on board as his head designer.

Risom’s early designs for Knoll made use of military surplus materials, including webbing and parachute cloth stretched over soft woods. As cherry wood became available again, Knoll released the company’s first catalogue, featuring 15 Risom designs, including cabinets, chests of drawers, bookcases, tables, and chairs. But as rationing amped up, Knoll asked Risom to revisit his more spartan designs. In 1943, they introduced the 650 Line, of which Risom’s Side Chair and Lounge Chair have become icons of 20th-century design. Later that year, Risom was drafted into the US Army.

When Risom returned from the war in late 1945, the atmosphere at Knoll’s company had shifted, due in large part to the increasing influence of Knoll’s soon-to-be-wife, Florence Schust. It seems that the tastes of Risom and Schust were incompatible, as he favored the softer, homier aesthetics of his Scandinavian roots mixed with vernacular Americana, while she was mentored by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and was commited to pushing the minimalist, Bauhaus look. In 1946, Risom officially parted ways with Knoll and launched his own New York-based firm Jens Risom Design (JRD).

For 25 years—during the heyday of postwar modernism—Risom’s company built an international reputation for solid wood furniture in the Scandinavian style. His advertising campaigns, photographed by Richard Avedon, were widely acclaimed. Risom was included in the legendary 1961 Playboy Magazine article “Designs for Living,” alongside Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, Eero Saarinen, Edward Wormley, and George Nelson. One of Risom’s executive office chairs was famously selected by President Lyndon Johnson for the Oval Office.

Risom sold JRD to Dictaphone in 1970, but stayed on as CEO for three years. He then moved to New Caanan and launched a consulting service called Design Control. In 1996, Risom was knighted in Denmark by Queen Margrethe II, and, in 1997, Knoll reissued his designs from the 1940s and ’50s—which are still in production today. In 2005, Risom began a long collaboration with furniture dealer Ralph Pucci.

Risom died in his New Caanan home in late 2016 at the age of 100.

Hans Knoll was born in 1914 in Stuttgart, Germany, into the successful manufacturing family behind Walter Knoll & Co. Early-20th-century Germany was an epicenter of modernist design theory—most notably expressed in the products and practices of the Deutscher Werkbund association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists, as well as the influential Bauhaus school—which advocated for design rooted in the principles of rationality, functionalism, and mass production. This milieu had a profound influence on Hans and inspired him to produce furniture for the new age. In 1937, after a stint in London, he moved to the United States and brought his modernist vision with him.

Florence Knoll (neé Schust) was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1917 and from an early age exhibited a strong interest in architecture. After graduating from the Kingswood School for Girls in 1934, she moved across campus to the newly formed, Bauhaus-inspired Cranbrook Academy of Art to study architecture under recent émigré, Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. There she befriended future design luminaries Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. She went on to Columbia University’s School of Architecture to study town planning. In 1937, she apprenticed under former-Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a few years later, enrolled at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became a life-long mentor to her.

In 1938, Hans Knoll established The Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company as a furniture exporter in a small space on East 72nd Street in New York City. As the company quickly grew, it evolved into a manufacturing business. In 1941, he opened his first plant in a former dance hall in East Greenville, Pennsylvania and hired Danish designer Jens Risom, who eventually helped him develop the first, original Knoll furniture designs. That same year, Hans met Florence on an interior design project and, recognizing her exceptional taste and eye, hired her to bring in business with architects and interior designers and, later, to provide in-house planning and interior design expertise for a growing corporate clientele. In 1946, Hans and Florence married and renamed the company Knoll Associates. That same year, the Knolls formally established the Planning Unit, solidifying the company’s role in the design of interior spaces. In 1951, Knoll International was launched as the German and French arms of Knoll, producing Knoll designs for the European market. Sadly, Hans died in a tragic car crash in 1955, but Florence remained actively involved until she retired in 1965.

Knoll’s signature pieces include Breuer’s Wassily Chair (1925), Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair (1929/1948), Harry Bertoia’s Diamond Chair (1952), Eero Saarinen’s Tulip Armchair (1957), as well as Florence‘s own furniture collection developed through the 1950s. Knoll’s impressive catalogue includes a who’s-who list of midcentury modern and contemporary design figures, including Jens Risom, Alexander Girard, George Nakashima, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Schultz, Warren Platner, Charles Pollock, Andrew Morrison & Bruce Hannah, Vignelli Associates, Richard Sapper, Maya Lin, Frank Gehry, and Rem Koolhaas. As of this writing, Knoll’s most recent collaboration is with David Adjaye, who designed the Washington Collection for Knoll and the Adjaye Collection for KnollTextiles. Today, the company is particularly focused on meeting the evolving needs of the 21st-century workplace.

In 2011, Knoll received the National Design Award for Corporate and Institutional Achievement from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. The award recognized Knoll’s legacy in American modern design and the company’s commitment to promoting the relationship between good design and quality of life. Knoll designs can be found in the permanent design collections of institutions around the world, including more than 30 acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

* All images courtesy Knoll, Inc. The David Adjaye Skeleton Chair was photographed by Joshua McHugh.