Bauhaus Furniture Design at Knoll
Modern Design and the Influence of the Bauhaus Style on the Company
Architects and artists of the Bauhaus school, many associated with Cranbrook, were a major influence on Knoll International's furniture and on contemporary interiors.
Numerous architects have at one time or another designed furniture pieces for Knoll International or have given the company exclusive rights to sell their designs.
These architects include Florence Knoll’s former mentors Marcel Breuer, who provided his Wassily chair, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose Barcelona chair series has become one of the touchstones of 20th-century seating design.
Today, there’s hardly a stylish home or contemporary office that doesn’t have at least one piece from or influenced by a Knoll designer, and the influence that Knoll has had on contemporary interior design can be traced directly to the influence that artists and architects, many of them Bauhaus proponents, had on Knoll.
In a 1964 article for Encyclopedia Britannica, Florence Knoll described her motivations in commissioning architects for Knoll pieces:
- Almost all the really significant, early innovations in modern furniture design were carried out by architects. The reason these architects had to design their own interiors, down to lighting fixtures and doorknobs, was obvious: the "interior decorators" of the time had no knowledge of modern architecture — or, if they had, they were generally out of sympathy with it.
Bauhaus Architects in the United States
The Bauhaus style began in Germany, but by the 1930s, most of the major Bauhaus players had fled the encroachment of the Nazis for the United States.
Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer were working out of offices in Boston, where Florence Schust was apprenticing when she met husband-to-be and business partner Hans Knoll.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he taught and greatly influenced Florence, who later said he’d had “a profound effect on my design approach and the clarification of design.”
The Influence of Cranbrook on Knoll
But the school that ultimately most influenced the Knoll company was Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, run by Eero Saarinen’s architect father, Eliel.
Florence, an orphan from the age of 12, became good friends with the entire family, spending vacations with them in their native Finland.
In 1940, two Cranbrook teachers, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames, won the Museum of Modern Art’s international competition for furniture design, effectively bringing legitimacy to what American designers were doing.
Cranbrook became renowned as a smithy for top-notch artists forged in the fire of Bauhaus ideals and craftsmanship. The school also became a de facto talent feeder for the Knoll company.
It was at Cranbrook that Florence first met sculptor Harry Bertoia, with whom she maintained a lifelong friendship and a mutually beneficial working relationship.
Harry Bertoia and the Knolls
One observer has described the Knolls’ relationship with Bertoia as “Medici-esque,” and indeed the couple set up a workshop near the company for Bertoia and gave him carte blanche to design as he was inspired.
Of the Diamond chairs that eventually came of this situation, Bertoia said, “If you will look at these chairs you will find that they are mostly made of air, just like sculpture. Space passes right through them. Once you get down to it, the chairs are studies in space, form and metal, too.”
Architects Charles Gwathmey, Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Robert Venturi and Eero Saarinen have all provided pieces for Knoll; artists who designed for Knoll include Anni Albers and Isamu Noguchi.
Florence's own pieces are or have been displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre and the Smithsonian.
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