Knoll International • Saarinen • Tulip chair • swivel • 81cm x 49cm x 53cm
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Knoll International • Saarinen Tulip chair
With the Pedestal Collection, Eero Saarinen wanted to clear away the "slum of legs" found beneath chairs and tables with four legs. He began with hundreds of drawings, followed by 1/4-scale models. Since the compelling idea was to design chairs that looked good in a room, the model furniture was placed in a doll's-house-sized scale model room. With his early training as a sculptor in mind, Saarinen refined his design through full-scale models, endlessly modifying the form with clay. "What interests me is when and where these structural plastic forms should be used. If you delve even deeper into different possibilities, you find that many different forms are equally logical — some ugly, some exciting, some earthy, some dizzying. The selection really becomes a sculptor's choice." Saarinen was supported by Don Petitt of Knoll's Design Development Group, who introduced several ingenious methods for making models. Together with a research team from Knoll, the problems arising in production were solved. Full-scale models became furniture, and with family and friends as "guinea pigs" the furniture was tested in the dining room and living room of the Saarinen house in Bloomfield Hills.
- Base: cast aluminium, Rilsan surface coating.
- Shell: moulded, glass-fibre-reinforced plastic shell.
- Upholstery: upholstered or unupholstered inner shell with removable seat cushion (cover with zip and hook-and-loop fastening).
- Note: the "KnollStudio" logo and Eero Saarinen's signature are on the underside of the base.
The chair is available in different versions:
- Swivel / fixed
- Unupholstered inner shell with seat cushion / upholstered inner shell with seat cushion
Further fabrics are available on request.
Dimensions: height 81cm x width 49cm x depth 53cm
Please note that the images shown are for illustration purposes and may differ from the actual final product.
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