Mid-Century Bird Chair & Ottoman by Harry Bertoia for Knoll

Sculptor and furniture designer Harry Bertoia was born in San Lorenzo, Italy in 1915. He settled in the United States in 1930, and went on to study at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit, Michigan (1936) and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in nearby Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1937-1939). At the latter, he encountered Walter Gropius, Edmund N. Bacon, and Charles and Ray Eames; he also taught metalworking and jewelry design (1937-1942) and graphics (1943) at the school.

In 1943, Bertoia moved to California to work with Charles and Ray Eames for the Evans Product Company. While there, he also took welding classes at Santa Monica City College, and began to create his first welded sculptures. In 1950, at the invitation of Florence Knoll, he re-settled in Bally, Pennsylvania, where he opened his own furniture and sculpture studio. His furniture designs from this period incorporated welded and molded wire, and included several pieces for the furniture manufacturer Knoll International. The most famous, the Diamond chair (1952-53), featured an organically shaped diamond-like shell seat made of chromium-plated steel wire; it was designed to be viewed from all sides, like a sculpture. Knoll marketed multiple versions of this chair, and the royalties Bertoia received as a result allowed him to devote himself primarily to his sculpture.

In 1953, the first of his many large sculptures—characterized by bold, organic forms and textured details—were commissioned for Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. Later commissions include a 1963 bronze mural at the Dulles International Airport in Virginia and a 1967 fountain at Philadelphia’s Civic Center. In 1960, Bertoia began to concentrate on creating sound sculptures. Known collectively as Sonambient, most consist of bunches of vertically mounted metal rods that create a range of sounds when they strike one another.

The designer has been quoted as saying, “In sculpture I am primarily interested in the relationship between form and space and the characteristics of the metal. In chairs many functional problems have to be solved first . . . but basically chairs are also studies in space, form and metal. On close inspection it becomes clear that they are mostly made up of air . . . Space flows right through them.” ¹

Bertoia’s numerous awards include a Gold Medal from the Architectural League of New York (1955–56), the Fine Arts Medal from the Pennsylvania Association of the American Institute of Architects (1963), and an honorary doctorate from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1976). His work is included in several collections, including those of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, among others.

Bertoia passed away in 1978 in Barto, Pennsylvania. 

1) Harry Bertoia, quoted in Karl Mang, Geschichte des Modernen Möbels, (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1978), 143. 

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.