1 Platner Coffee Table Designed by Warren Platner for Knoll

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1 Platner Coffee Table Designed by Warren Platner for Knoll

About the Item

Warren Platner Architect and designer Warren Platner (1919-) was born in Baltimore and graduated from the Cornell University School of Architecture in 1941. He got his professional start working in some of the most prominent and interesting architecture practices in the country. Between 1945 and 1950 he worked for Raymond Loewy and I.M. Pei. He was a part of Eero Saarinen`s office from 1960-65, participating in the designs for the Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C., the Repertory Theater at Lincoln Center and several dormitories at Yale University. It was after this extensive exposure to many innovative modern designers of the period, and having gathered a great deal of experience, that Platner opened his own office, Platner Associates, in Connecticut in 1967. Platner designed other office furniture and was also involved in a number of large architecture and interior design commissions in which he was often responsible for details down to the dishes and textiles, in addition to the furniture and textiles. Warren Platner 1966 Warren Platner worked with both of the Industrial and organic design giants before turning his attention to steel wire furniture, for which he devised the structure and production method. Requiring as many as 1,000 welds and crafted out of wire and space, the Coffee Table demonstrates Platner’s belief that there is room in modernism “for the kind of decorative, gentle, graceful design that appeared in a period style like Louis XV.” Base constructed of vertical steel rods welded to circular horizontal and edge-framing rods. Finished in bright nickel with 0.4-inch-thick tempered glass top. 2 available.

Creator:
Warren Platner (Designer)
Design:
Platner Coffee TablePlatner Series
Dimensions:
Height: 15.25 in (38.74 cm)Width: 36 in (91.44 cm)Length: 15.25 in (38.74 cm)
Style:
Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Nickel
Place of Origin:
United States
Period:
1990-1999
Date of Manufacture:
1990s
Condition:
Wear consistent with age and use.
Seller Location:
Pasadena, TX
Reference Number:
Seller: MR156691stDibs: LU867116079012

Shop All Warren Platner

Warren Platner

Though vintage Warren Platner chairs, sofas and interiors are icons of mid-century modernism, the architect and furniture designer took his stylistic inspiration from as far back as 18th-century France, once saying about his seminal collection for Knoll that his design intent was to evoke “the kind of decorative, gentle, graceful kind of design that appeared in period style like Louis XV.”

Indeed, the marriage of modern sensibility and classical grace is a marker of Platner’s style across furnishings and interiors — both genres in which he left an enduring legacy.

Born in 1919 in Baltimore, Maryland, Platner studied architecture at Cornell before cutting his teeth working for design icons like Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche, eventually serving as head of interior design in the latter’s office. In 1965, Platner opened his own office, in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he continued to hone his particular brand of graceful modernism.

Knoll released the Platner Collection of seating and tables in 1966. (Originally designed in 1962, the suite took nearly four years of development to bring to life.)

The decorative bent-metal-and-glass pieces — an armchair, a dining table and more — make certain nods to the trademarks of his former employers, but also to the shapes of historic European furniture. The sculptural elegance of his line recalls Saarinen’s iconic Tulip collection, which includes armchairs and dining tables, while his materiality aligns with Roche’s cutting-edge use of glass and metal for the headquarters of the Ford Foundation in New York.

Many of Platner’s Knoll pieces would go on to find homes in a certain fabled locale: the Windows on the World restaurant at the original World Trade Center, whose interiors Platner was tapped to outfit in the mid-1970s. Upon the opening of the restaurant in 1976, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger dubbed its style “sensuous modernism” — an apt tagline for Platner’s oeuvre as a whole.

Platner died in 2006 at the age of 86. His furniture is still produced by Knoll, and original examples — along with idiosyncratic custom works he created for interior design clients — are coveted by collectors today.

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