Settee (Model 66)

Description

Gallery Rotations Spring 2013
Florence Knoll
United States, born 1917
Settee (model 66)
circa 1964
Wool upholstery and square tubular steel
Manufactured by Knoll Associates
Gift of Herbert and Susan Johe, 2012/1.294
The neutral color, basic geometrical forms, and glimpses of metal in this settee are all characteristic elements of Florence Knoll’s furniture. Her pieces were a discrete complement to the flamboyant, sculptural designs her company, Knoll Associates, commissioned from star modernist architects like Mies van der Rohe or Eero Saarinen. They also served a vital role in the corporate interiors she designed as head of Knoll’s Planning Unit, the first design practice associated with a furniture company. The “Knoll look” was unmistakable: functional spaces tailored to the client but enlivened by texture, accents of vibrant color, and the placement of a few of the company’s dramatic signature pieces.
Florence Knoll was instrumental in legitimizing interior design, a career path more accessible to women. Trained as an architect, she always described her design work as a form of architecture, and her Planning Unit took a systematic approach to the spaces of its corporate clients. So successful was this approach that the Knoll look became synonymous with corporate America, obscuring the humanizing intent of its innovative, playful contributions to modernism.