Knoll International - at that time Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company - was founded in 1938 by Hans Knoll, who, as the son of Walter Knoll, had grown up with a strong relationship to the furniture industry, specifically the Bauhaus movement had a strong influence on him and he would come to count Bauhaus pioneers Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer among his circle of acquaintances. Driven by the idea that modern architects needed modern furniture, he hired room designer and designer Florence Schust, who with a degree from Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, a degree in architecture from the Architectural Association in London, and experience from the architecture offices of Gropius and Breuer had an impressive, modernist, CV. Following their marriage in 1946 Florence Knoll and Hans Knoll founded Knoll Associates and retained the Bauhaus approach, but through cooperating with Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Jens Risom and Isamu Noguchi also guided the company in a more international direction. To this day, Knoll International is one of the most renowned manufacturers in the design furniture industry and counts design classics like the Barcelona Collection by Mies van der Rohe, the Saarinen Tulip Chairs by Eero Saarinen, the Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer and the well-known Diamond Chairs by Harry Bertoia among its exclusive portfolio.
The Saarinen Tulip Chairs from Knoll International
Barcelona Day Bed by Mies van der Rohe
Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer
Knoll Family Tree
Bertoia Outdoor Chair from Knoll International
smow sells exclusively originals from licensed manufacturers and is an official trading partner of Knoll International.
...While the fact that in 1954 Knoll entered a licensing agreement with Belgian manufacturer De Coene is not irrelevant... In the early 1950s Hans and Florence Knoll established a number of partnerships and realised numerous interiors projects in Europe, Knoll International being established in Stuttgart in 1951 to coordinate and oversee the European ventures...
...Florence Knoll - Architect In addition to nurturing her educationally the Saarinens also took Florence Schust under their wing, making her in all but title part of their family, and taking her with them on their annual summer holiday to Europe... The Knoll Planning Unit Moving to New York in 1941 Florence Schust jobbed for several architectural practices before her path crossed that of Hans Knoll: scion of a German furniture dynasty, in the process of establishing his own furniture company in New York, a furniture company specialising in the modern European designs Hans had, in effect, grown up with...
...Focussing principally on furniture and lighting design Jehs+Laub have developed a wide range of products for international manufacturers as varied as, and amongst many others, Fritz Hansen, Wilkhahn, Knoll, Belux and Cassina...
...Horsepower by Antenna Design for Knoll Good design is, as we recently noted, not necessarily a case of finding the correct solution but of correctly understanding the question... Which is also the reason why we were immediately taken by Antenna Design's Horsepower for Knoll...
...In 2000 Glen Oliver Löw returned to Germany where he took up a professorial position at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, HFBK, in Hamburg and established a design studio in the city from where he has realised projects with clients such as Thonet, Steelcase and Knoll...
