Florence Knoll Credenza or Sideboard with Marble, 1954
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Florence Knoll Credenza or Sideboard with Marble, 1954
About the Item
- Creator:Florence Knoll (Designer)
- Dimensions:Height: 25.79 in (65.5 cm)Width: 74.81 in (190 cm)Depth: 17.72 in (45 cm)
- Style:Modern (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1954
- Condition:Wear consistent with age and use.
- Seller Location:Berlin, DE
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU98079602331
Florence Knoll
Architect, furniture designer, interior designer, entrepreneur — Florence Knoll had a subtle but profound influence on the course of mid-century American modernism. Dedicated to functionality and organization, and never flamboyant, Knoll shaped the ethos of the postwar business world with her polished, efficient design and skillfully realized office plans.
Knoll had perhaps the most thorough design education of any of her peers. Florence Schust was orphaned at age 12, and her guardian sent her to Kingswood, a girl’s boarding school that is part of the Cranbrook Educational Community in suburban Detroit. Her interest in design brought her to the attention of Eliel Saarinen, the Finnish architect and head of the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Saarinen and his wife took the talented child under their wing, and she became close to their son, the future architect Eero Saarinen. While a student at the academy, Florence befriended artist-designer Harry Bertoia and Charles and Ray Eames. Later, she studied under three of the Bauhaus masters who emigrated to the United States. She worked as an apprentice in the Boston architectural offices of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe taught her at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
In 1941, she met Hans Knoll, whose eponymous furniture company was just getting off the ground. They married in 1946, and her design sense and his business skills soon made Knoll Inc. a leading firm in its field. Florence signed up the younger Saarinen as a designer, and would develop pieces by Bertoia, Mies and the artist Isamu Noguchi. Her main work came as head of the Knoll Planning Group, designing custom office interiors for clients such as IBM and CBS. The furniture Florence created for these spaces reflects her Bauhaus training: the pieces are pure functional design, exactingly built; their only ornament from the materials, such as wood and marble. Her innovations — the oval conference table, for example, conceived as a way to ensure clear sightlines among all seated at a meeting — were always in the service of practicality.
Since her retirement in 1965, Knoll received the National Medal of Arts, among other awards; in 2004 the Philadelphia Museum of Art mounted the exhibition “Florence Knoll: Defining Modern” — well deserved accolades for a strong, successful design and business pioneer. As demonstrated on these pages, the simplicity of Knoll’s furniture is her work’s great virtue: they fit into any interior design scheme.
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Price Upon Request - Florence Knoll for Knoll International Sideboard in TeakBy Florence KnollLocated in Waalwijk, NLFlorence Knoll for Knoll International, sideboard, teak, steel, walnut, United States, 1961 This minimalistic sideboard was made with the aim of creating office furniture that would meet the special needs in establishing a pleasant and healthy working environment around the sixties. Knoll wanted to abandon the typical diagonal placement of the executive desk within a room. Her preference was a rectilinear arrangement of the furniture in the office. She noted that ‘The parallel or L-shaped plan made more sense and saved square footage.’ This sideboard is a perfect example in achieving these goals. This design is well-constructed based on an elongated body executed in teak, offering a variety of different storage possibilities. The brushed steel base features a solid construction of clear lines and sharp edges. The sides are executed in walnut showing nice wooden grains. The panels are equipped with brushed steel grips, emphasizing the sideboard’s modern and sleek appearance. Florence Knoll (1917-) was trained as an architect and had a sense of style from a very young age. During her schooltime at Cranbrook, Eliel Saarinen (then the headmaster) and his family included her in their family. In 1936 she met Alvar Aalto and was trained by Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius and (as if the long list of eminent designers is not long enough) Mies van der Rohe. This meant that although she was barely out of her teens, she was educated by the best of the European modernists. When she arrived in New York she worked on interior projects (being the only female) which is how she came to know Hans Knoll. When Florence joined Knoll, the planning unit started. Florence also made sure that the designs where more 'American Modernist' instead of Scandinavian, When Hans Knoll died she...Category
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