Knoll Bassett is pictured with a model for a project. Behind
her is the skeleton of a skyscraper in progress.
Many viewed Knoll Bassett as the right person in the right
place at the right time. An exceptional designer in her own right,
she also became a recognized champion of the leading architects of
the day. Central to all her projects was her philosophy that
architecture and interior design must be driven by function and
work processes as well as by form and aesthetics.
Most pieces Knoll Bassett designed are still in production (the
four that are not were made by Knoll Bassett especially for the
exhibit). What is of particular interest about this show is that
the very private Knoll Bassett, who has declined many honors over
the years, not only accepted the award but that she designed the
installation herself, down to the smallest detail. That
meticulous attention to detail prevails throughout her design
career.
What Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Kathy Hiesinger describes
as "a difficult design space," a narrow gallery with 18 ceilings
and walls interrupted by three windows and a door, Knoll Bassett
rendered impressive and humane. She created a model of the
installation and sent it to the museum. As Hiesinger describes
it, Knoll Bassett neatly solved the problem of a high narrow
space by the use of brightly colored panels that draw the
visitor's eye to his or her surroundings, away from the ceilings.
Knoll Bassett treated the 330-square-foot space as a
three-dimensional cube in which each aspect plays off the others.
She selected the furniture and filled the walls with blowups of
some of her interiors. As Hiesinger said, "It's small, but
mighty!"
Knoll Bassett's contributions to corporate design were mighty and
certainly not small. She hardly considered herself a furniture
designer; she intended the pieces she wrought as fillers in a
specific project. They may have started life as fillers but they
easily became centerpieces as she introduced twist after twist to
corporate design. Her works are classic pieces, much in demand
and still in production.
Knoll Bassett introduced lounge seating to the office in 1954 in
the form of settees and lounge chairs that harmonized
serendipitously with their surroundings. A few years later, in
1961, she brought credenzas to the modern corporate world, an
innovation that stood corporate life on its head. The simple
lines and flat surfaces of her credenzas hid the detritus that
formerly accumulated on desks and shelves in the business world.
The one on view stands on a polished chrome base and has two
storage cabinets, each containing two adjustable shelves. It was
produced in an array of materials.
Another Knoll Bassett innovation was the table desk that she
introduced in 1961. She considered her table desks as the "meat
and potatoes" of a design project, saying that the need existed,
so she met it. The example on view has a polished chrome base and
a mahogany top. It, too, remains in production.
Knoll Bassett came to American design early in life. Born
Florence Schust and orphaned at 12, at 14 her guardian chose for
her the Kingswood School on the campus of the Cranbrook Academy
of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. At Kingswood, she studied under
Eliel Saarinen and his wife Loja, who took her into their family.
Their influence was profound.
On graduation from Kingswood, she studied design at Cranbrook for
several years where she worked with such lights of modernism as
Harry Bertoia, Carl Milles, Maria Grotel and other pillars of
modern design. She later enrolled at the Architectural
Association in London where she came under the influence of Le
Corbusier and the Bauhaus. She continued to spend her summers in
Finland with her adopted family, the Saarinens. When World War II
broke out, she returned to the United States and went to the
Illinois Institute of Technology, where she studied under Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, graduating as an architect. She spent another
few years working for Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius in Boston
before landing at Knoll in New York in 1943.
Hans Knoll, who came from Stuttgart, Germany, in 1937, had
established Hans G. Knoll in 1938 to supply modern furniture for
modern buildings. The new firm quickly established itself as a
purveyor of high-quality products from the major modernism
giants. Florence Schust brought a canny mind to the burgeoning
business. She took on the responsibility of designing the
interiors of projects the company executed, working closely with
clients to assess the needs of the people who would use the
spaces.
While Knoll had founded his company with an eye to producing only
modern designs, over time the focus evolved into the Bauhausian
integration of design excellence, technological innovation and
mass production. With this in mind, Schust recruited many of her
mentors and teachers as designers for Knoll. They included Eero
Saarinen (Eliel's son), Mies van der Rohe, Jens Risom, Isamu
Noguchi, Bertoia and Breuer. Knoll produced designs for all of
them. Bertoia's Diamond chair, Saarinen's Tulip chair and
Noguchi's coffee table remain highly sought-after classics, as
does the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair.
A settee, a sofa and a lounge chair from the Executive
Collection of 1961 are upholstered in a handsome mulberry
color. The coffee table is of Knoll Bassett's parallel bars
design.
There was yet another integration at Knoll in 1946 when
Schust married Knoll.
Knoll Bassett established the company's Planning Unit to work
with clients to help them identify their design needs. She also
assumed responsibility for the company's showrooms around the
world. Wherever she put her hand to a project, she gave it
exactly the right form, balance and color. Stymied in her
attempts to find textiles suitable for the pieces produced at
Knoll, she established the company's own textile division. She
supervised all facets of corporate identity from the graphics to
the showroom. She managed corporate advertising. In 1950, she
designed Hans Knoll's own office using a parallel plan that saved
scarce square footage. Henceforth, clients were pleased to
abandon the traditional design to embrace the sleek arrangement
in which a storage cabinet allowed a conference table in a
limited space.
Hans Knoll died by accident in 1955 and his widow became
president of Knoll. She married Harry Hood Bassett in 1958 and
retired from Knoll in 1965.
Knoll Bassett's projects include the interiors of CBS and the
Seagram's buildings in New York, the Heinz headquarters in
Pittsburgh and the landmark interiors of the 1956 Connecticut
General building in Bloomfield, Conn. Her work is represented in
the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Museum of
Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée des Arts
Décoratifs in Paris.
"Florence Knoll Bassett: Defining Modern" is supported by Collab,
a nonprofit organization founded in 1970 to raise funds for the
Philadelphia Museum of Art's modern and contemporary design
collection, which now includes more than 1,000 works. The
collection ranges from appliances and furniture to ceramics,
glass, and lighting.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is at Benjamin Franklin Parkway
and 26th Street. For information, 215-763-8100 or .
