Florence Knoll humbly referred to her furniture designs as “meat and potatoes” — filler between the standout pieces of Bertoia, Mies, and Saarinen. 65 years later her furniture is anything but filler. Her attention to detail, eye for proportion, and command of the modern aesthetic resulted in some of the most celebrated furniture of the modern era.
With recommendations from Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto, Florence Schust studied under some of the greatest twentieth century architects, including Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
In 1941 she met Hans Knoll who was establishing a furniture company. With Florence’s design skills and Hans’ business acumen and salesmanship, the pair, who married in 1946, grew the nascent company into an international arbiter of style and design.