Vintage View: The low down on Knoll know-how

IT WAS a €40 conference table in white, but something in the elegance of the executive grey trim, said quality.

I performed the traditional Monty Pythonesque descent to the floor known to the enthusiastic collector of slender means who regularly drift-nets every fathom of the retail seas.

It’s a subtle, vertical genuflection of stifled agony. Body concertinaed in a forest of second-hand furniture legs, I looked up, bruised an eyeball, and took in one word with deep satisfaction — Knoll.

Think of Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and you arrive at the production name of Knoll, a company founded in 1938 in the United States by Hans Knoll.

Not to be confused with Parker Knoll, maker of whiskered British sofas and chairs — the table wasn’t really even vintage, but with a pedigree like this it was still a nice find. Office furniture has been a proving ground for so many classic domestic pieces, and Knoll was a pioneer of the signature Mad Men cool we’re still chilling in today.

With his German heritage, Hans Knoll was fascinated by the Bauhaus movement and living in England and Switzerland in the 1940s, he tried to navigate past the restraints on overseas imports to bring the best pieces of contemporary European furniture into the United States.

Frustrated by war time embargoes, Hans turned back as his father had done, to makers on home soil. His gifted wife Florence, known by her design loveys, including close friend Saarinen as ‘Shu’, took over the company when Hans died in a car accident in 1955.

With a rigorous training through the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and time at Illinois Institute of Technology side by side with Charles Eames under Bruer and van der Rohe, her input in the company would be seismic.

Florence had a background in architecture and directed the company’s future to the modern minimalist movement — which was rocking the design establishment worldwide at the time.

She was fearless in her use of new materials such as moulded ply-wood and plastics, and celebrated, rather than feared the potential of mass production. Knoll textiles, an integral part of the company, were influenced by men’s suiting — a connection between fashion and furniture now commonplace.

Although known for domestic furnishings, Florence Knoll had a special interest in office design. With gene-level good taste, her clients were inspired by, and confident in her abilities.

She firmly stamped the company motto as ‘good design is good business’ and working with her ‘Planning Unit’ and using Knoll furniture, colours and fabric choices, the entire layout of many iconic corporate palaces in the States including GM and IBM, were delivered with Florence’s lighter, modernist touch.

Florence and her team started with what the client and its employees needed day to day. The office buildings and contents were considered as a whole — a holistic design incorporating beauty, function, tender human comforts and of course, efficient working performance.

Knoll interiors were never a decorator’s afterthought, but instead had architecture written up in every stitch and rivet of efficient furnishings. Today’s work-station, freed from the confining walls of a conventional 1950s office, was introduced by Florence Knoll.

Half of the 1960s through 1970s catalogue of Knoll was Florence’s furniture designs, and her original sofas, chairs, coffee tables and desks have remained iconic collector’s fare, many of which show the marked influence of van der Rohe.

Three quarters of a century on, Knoll has weathered mixed fortune to become Knoll International. The company still holds the license for the Florence Knoll collection, Eero Saarinen (Tulip pieces and the Womb chair he made for Florence), Harry Bertoia, Mies van der Rohe (Barcelona pieces and the Brno chair) and Warren Platner, whose wiry, ste- based chairs and stools are being knocked off everywhere in reproductions at the moment.

Marcel Bruer’s Waasily chair and Laccio side-table and bench are all produced by Knoll. Its very first pieces by Jens Risom, dining chairs (1943) using maple and discarded parachute webbing widely available at the end of WWII, are also still made by Knoll. More recent successes include Don Chadwick’s popular and affordable plastic side-chairs (2009).

My choice to run with my Knoll table? Well, if you’ve chased Eames executive chairs without success or simply want something different but equally prestigious, take a look at the bucket seated chairs of Charles Pollock for Knoll (1963).

With its exquisite comfort and aluminium rim, it was a favourite for public servants and high level executives alike in the 60s and 70s and starts at around €700 for a good second-hand example without tears to the leather. Look out too for recently discarded Dividends Horizon ‘Y’ based conference tables, which make stunning dining tables on retirement from the boardroom. www.knoll.com.