Accessory

Miniatures Diamond Chair, Bertoia 1952

Harry Bertoia, who came from Italy, originally dedicated himself to sculpting. He created a series of chairs and seats using techniques he was familiar with from gold work and sculpting with iron wire. Until 1953 he developed these ideas together with specialists from the Knoll company until they were ready for mass production. The structure of the »Diamond Chair« clearly separates the different functions of the chair: the transparent wire shell is bent out of a quadratic lattice into an organically shaped diamond like a net frozen in space, and the base of round iron embraces it like a polished diamond. Bertoia considered his furniture to resemble his sculptures and explained: »In chairs many functional problems have to be solved first, but basically chairs are also studies in space, form and metal. On close inspection it becomes clear that they are mostly made up of air. Space flows right through them.«