Florence Knoll

Famed for her elegant and clean modernist designs, Florence Knoll’s early years were directly influenced by some of the great designers of the 20th Century: Eero Saarinen, whom she met while studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, under whom she studied while at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago; and Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, for whom she worked in Boston. The time she spent with Mies van der Rohe she later described as “a very valuable year,” and when comparing her famous range with his Barcelona chair, the influence – the homage – is immediately apparent.

Indeed, the company that Florence and her husband Hans Knoll formed had as a founding ethos the integration of modern design with the Bauhaus principle of producing products that "represented design excellence, technological innovation and mass production." Drawing on her connections with top architects and designers, Florence subsequently secured the commercial rights to produce classic designs like the Barcelona range, which helped her to establish the Knoll company as a leader in the development of the post-Bauhaus International Style.

A multifaceted designer, Florence became renowned for “total design” and her work encompassed textiles, interior design, space planning, furniture design and architecture. The Lounge Range from David Phillips Design Classics epitomises her products – immediately pleasing classic simplicity interpreted through the medium of the highest possible quality raw materials handmade into objects of beauty.