German Vostra Lounge Chair by Jens Risom for Walter Knoll, 1941

Danish-American architect-designer Jens Risom was born in Copenhagen in 1916, the son of a nationally renowned architect of the Nordic Classicism style. Between 1935 and 1938, he trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Ole Wanscher and Kaare Klint, alongside classmates Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen. For a short time following his studies, he took on furniture and interior designer projects for the Copenhagen-based architectural firm Ernst Kuhn. He then moved briefly to Stockholm, where he worked for Nordiska Kompaniet and met Alvar Aalto and Bruno Mathsson. Around 1939, he immigrated to New York with ambitions to introduce the Scandinavian modernist approach to the US furniture market.

Risom’s arrival in the US coincided with the years of materials shortages brought on by the war. As a result, Risom was unable to secure a position in a furniture company, and, instead, found work designing textiles for decorator Dan Cooper. Eager to do more, he soon convinced Cooper to expand into the furniture market, and together they found projects with young, progressive architects like Ed Stone and George Nelson. In 1939-40, Ed Stone was invited to create Collier Magazine’s House of Ideas pavilion at Rockefeller Center as part of the New York World’s Fair, and Risom designed all of the furniture.

Around 1941, Risom met Hans Knoll, a German-born entrepreneur in the furniture industry who had a showroom on Madison Avenue dedicated to rather lackluster furnishings. Sharing a dream to do something more vanguard, they joined forces and set off on a four-month tour of the US in search of design inspiration. By 1942, Knoll launched Hans Knoll Furniture Company with Risom on board as his head designer.

Risom’s early designs for Knoll made use of military surplus materials, including webbing and parachute cloth stretched over soft woods. As cherry wood became available again, Knoll released the company’s first catalogue, featuring 15 Risom designs, including cabinets, chests of drawers, bookcases, tables, and chairs. But as rationing amped up, Knoll asked Risom to revisit his more spartan designs. In 1943, they introduced the 650 Line, of which Risom’s Side Chair and Lounge Chair have become icons of 20th-century design. Later that year, Risom was drafted into the US Army.

When Risom returned from the war in late 1945, the atmosphere at Knoll’s company had shifted, due in large part to the increasing influence of Knoll’s soon-to-be-wife, Florence Schust. It seems that the tastes of Risom and Schust were incompatible, as he favored the softer, homier aesthetics of his Scandinavian roots mixed with vernacular Americana, while she was mentored by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and was commited to pushing the minimalist, Bauhaus look. In 1946, Risom officially parted ways with Knoll and launched his own New York-based firm Jens Risom Design (JRD).

For 25 years—during the heyday of postwar modernism—Risom’s company built an international reputation for solid wood furniture in the Scandinavian style. His advertising campaigns, photographed by Richard Avedon, were widely acclaimed. Risom was included in the legendary 1961 Playboy Magazine article “Designs for Living,” alongside Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, Eero Saarinen, Edward Wormley, and George Nelson. One of Risom’s executive office chairs was famously selected by President Lyndon Johnson for the Oval Office.

Risom sold JRD to Dictaphone in 1970, but stayed on as CEO for three years. He then moved to New Caanan and launched a consulting service called Design Control. In 1996, Risom was knighted in Denmark by Queen Margrethe II, and, in 1997, Knoll reissued his designs from the 1940s and ’50s—which are still in production today. In 2005, Risom began a long collaboration with furniture dealer Ralph Pucci.

Risom died in his New Caanan home in late 2016 at the age of 100.

The furniture manufacturing brand currently known as Walter Knoll traces its beginnings to the 19th century, when German leather virtuoso Wilhelm Knoll (1839-1907) founded his eponymous accessories atelier in 1865 in Stuttgart, Germany. Quickly gaining a reputation for quality and luxury, Wilhelm Knoll was invited to be a purveyor to the Royal Court of Württemberg, and a design dynasty was born.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Wilhelm Knoll expanded into furniture production and renamed his company Ledersitzmöbelfabrik Wilhelm Knoll (Wilhelm Knoll Leather Seating Factory). In 1907, the family business was transferred to Wilhelm’s sons, Willy (1878-1954) and Walter (1876-1971). Right away, the Knoll brothers found success by introducing the first club chair to Germany and opening branches in Vienna and St. Petersburg.

During the 1920s, Stuttgart was a vital hub of modernist discourse—which encouraged designs rooted in principles of reduction, functionalism, and mass production—and Willy and Walter Knoll both found unique inspiration in the innovative ideas that proliferated around them. Willy developed the legendary Antimott Series, which combined wooden frames with elastic strapping to achieve slimmer, more comfortable, more supportive chairs and sofas. Notably, lightweight, aluminum-framed Antimott seating was used to furnish the Zeppelin airships. Antimott designs remained a bestseller for the Wilhelm Knoll Company well into the postwar era.

Meanwhile, Walter Knoll decided to leave his family’s business to found Walter Knoll & Co. in 1925. Walter was an advocate of the era’s avant-garde and became the first manufacturer to specialize in the production of Bauhaus-designed furniture. The seating produced by Walter Knoll & Co. incorporated colored fabrics in lieu of leather, and Walter’s Prodomo Series is historically classified as the first modernist upholstered furniture.

Iconic architect-designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) befriended Walter around this time and invited him to provide furniture for residential buildings exhibited at the landmark Weißenhofsiedlung exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927. For this architectural experiment, Mies invited Europe’s most forward-thinking architects—Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier, for example—to develop idealized housing models for the middle and working classes. For Mies’s own steel-framed apartments, Walter contributed furniture with tubular steel frames, which his company began to produce in 1929.

In 1937, Walter Knoll & Co. relocated operations to Herrenberg, Germany, where it still resides today. As Germany ramped up toward World War II, both Knoll companies were forced to cease production and eventually suffered devastation from bombings. It was during these years that Walter’s son, Hans Knoll, embarked on his journey to America, where he eventually founded his own company, Knoll Inc.

In 1945, Walter Knoll & Co. and the Wilhelm Knoll Company began to rebuild their companies for the postwar era. That year, Walter, with the help of his sons and designer Jens Risom, launched the streamlined Vostra Chair and earned international accolades. By 1950, the Wilhelm Knoll Company was back on its feet as well, but Willy passed away that year and was succeeded by his son Dieter—who would go on to found the Dieter Knoll company in Austria in 1962. Walter Knoll retired from his own company in 1964 and was succeeded by his son Robert Knoll and his nephew, Dr. Walter Combe.

In the 1970s, Walter Knoll & Co. moved into the contract furniture business and famously outfitted Tegel Airport in Berlin. Sought-after designs produced by Walter Knoll & Co. include Bucket Seat 369 (1956), Arno Votteler’s 368 Armchair (1956), and Lady’s Chair 375 and Gentleman's Chair 376 (both 1957). In more recent years, the company has commissioned designs from architect-designers, such as EOOS, Norman Foster, Preben Fabricius & Jorgen Kastholm, and Pearson Lloyd. 

In 1985, Walter Knoll & Co. took over the Wilhelm Knoll Company, with the latter’s designs continuing to be produced as the “Wilhelm Knoll Collection.” In 1993, the Rolf Benz family bought the Walter Knoll trademark. In 2007, the company went international, launching a subsidiary in Australia and eventually opening showrooms in London, Paris, Mumbai, and Beijing. In 2015, the company celebrated its 150-year anniversary.

* All images courtesy of Walter Knoll