Leather Desk Chair by Richard Sapper for Knoll Inc., 1970s

German-born, Italian-based industrial designer Richard Sapper (1932-2015) is internationally celebrated for his unique sensibility, which is considered to be a blend of Teutonic rationality and Mediterranean style.

Sapper’s education was diverse—he studied philosophy, anatomy, and engineering, but graduated with a degree in business from the University of Munich. Upon completion, Sapper worked in the styling department of Daimler Benz in Stuttgart, before relocating to Milan in 1958. There he worked for a time in the office of Italian design master Gio Ponti (1891-1979). He opened his own design studio in 1959 and quickly earned a reputation for reinventing existing technology for new consumer products. He won his first Compasso d’Oro in 1960 for his Static Table Clock for Lorenz, which was repurposed from war-surplus torpedo timers.

Between 1957 and 1977, Sapper began a long collaboration with Italian architect-designer Marco Zanuso (1916-2001). The pair started out working as design consultants for the Italian electronics manufacturer Brionvega. Over the years, they took on projects for many other brands, and, along the way, pioneered a new postwar aesthetic known as techno-functionalism. Successful designs by the pair include Lambda Chair for Gavina (1959), Doney 14 TV for Brionvega (1962)—the first fully-transistor television—the Grillo Telephone for Siemens (1966), and a series of houses for the landmark Italy: The New Domestic Landscape exhibition in New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1972.

Among Sapper's best known solo designs are the Tizio Desk Lamp for Artemide (1972)—one of the best-selling lamps of the 20th century—and the 9091 Kettle for Alessi (1983). Through the course of his career, Sapper produced successful and innovative designs for many well-known Italian and international brands, including B&B Italia, FIAT, Heuer, Kartell, Knoll, Magis, Molteni, Pirelli, and many others. In the 1980s, Sapper became the chief industrial design consultant for IBM and Lenovo, creating the very first design for the ThinkPad laptop (1992). 

Sapper has won many awards and accolades, including multiple Compasso d’Oro awards (1960, 1962, 1964, 1967, 1979, 1987, 1991, 1994, and 1998), the Lucky Strike Award from the Raymond Loewy Foundation (1992), and the Federal Republic of Germany Grand Merit Cross (2012). Sapper’s work has been featured in many museum exhibitions and permanent collections around the world, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Museum, and Brooklyn Museum; and London's Design Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum.

Sapper passed away at the age of 83 in 2015.

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.