Hans Knoll, the son of a pioneer German furniture manufacturer, founded the Knoll company in New York City in 1938, one year after immigrating from Germany. He hired Florence Schust, a Cranbrook graduate who had worked for Gropius and Breuer, and the two were married in 1946. The next year, they opened a textiles division and showroom that was flanked with some of the worlds leading designers. Knoll would triumph thanks to impressive international contacts, gaining exclusive rights to the works of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and producing them to their original specifications. This included the 1929 Barcelona Chair. They also commissioned Eero Saarinen to design the now iconic Tulip chair, and hold the rights to Marcel Breuer’s seminal Wassily Chair. Artists such as Harry Bertoia, Jens Risom, and Isamu Noguchi would also collaborate with Knoll.
