Best known as a sculptor and furniture designer, Harry Bertoia was born in San Lorenzo, Udine, Italy. In 1928 he began taking drawing classes in Italy before immigrating first to Canada, then to Detroit in 1930. He received a scholarship to the School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts in 1936 and a year later was awarded a teaching scholarship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. There he taught metalworking from 1937 to 1942 and then graphics for one year. In 1943 Bertoia moved to Los Angeles to work as a furniture designer. He also took welding classes at Santa Monica City College and in 1947 created his first welded sculptures. During this period Bertoia became an American citizen. His employer, Knoll Associates, introduced the Bertoia Collection of furniture in 1952. The following year he received his first commission for a large-scale sculpture for the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. Bertoia subsequently resigned from Knoll Associates to concentrate on his sculpture. His distinguished work brought him other major commissions for the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Chapel, Lambert Airport in St. Louis, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Virginia. Beginning in the 1940s, Bertoia exhibited extensively. Among his many awards were the Gold Medal given by the Architectural League of New York (1955-56), the Fine Arts Medal from the Pennsylvania Association of the American Institute of Architects (1963), and an honorary doctorate from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Eames, Charles (1907-1978), American architect and designer, best known for his seminal formfitting designs for chairs. He studied architecture under Eliel Saarinen and in 1940 collaborated with Eero Saarinen in designing a chair that won first prize in the organic furniture competition sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This chair, with a molded plywood shell, foam-rubber padding, and innovative rubber-weld joints, unfortunately proved too expensive for mass manufacture, but Eames continued to pursue his goal of creating an artistically valid design that could also be produced by modern mass-production techniques. In collaboration with his wife, Ray (Kaiser) Eames, he succeeded in 1946 with an elegantly simple chair consisting of a molded plywood back and seat, mounted on a tubular metal frame; this design became the prototype for much mass-production seating of the 1950s and '60s. The Eamses' most famous later design was a luxurious leather-covered reclining armchair with a matching molded ottoman. For their house (1949) in Santa Monica, California, they designed practical prefabricated elements�doors, windows, and walls�with which they hoped to popularise the construction of well-designed mass-production housing.

Josef Hoffmann was born in Pirnitz, Moravia (now Czechoslovakia) in 1870. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Carl von Hasenauer and Otto Wagner, whose theories of a functional, modern architecture profoundly effected his architectural works. He won the Rome prize in 1895 and the following year joined the Wagner's office. Hoffmann established his own office in 1898 and taught at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule from 1899 until 1936. He was a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a group of revolutionary artists and architects. He actively supported the group by designing its exhibitions and writing for the magazine Ver Sacrum. In 1903 he helped found the Wiener Werkstätte. Although Hoffmann's earliest works belong to a Secessionist tangent of the Art Nouveau, his later works introduced a vocabulary of regular grids and squares. The functional clarity and abstract purity of his later works mark him as an important precursor of the Modern Movement. A highly individualistic architect and designer, Hoffman's work combined the simplicity of craft production with a refined aesthetic ornament. He died in Vienna in 1956.

Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe was born in Aachen, Germany in 1886. He worked in the family stone-carving business before he joined the office of Bruno Paul in Berlin. He entered the studio of Peter Behrens in 1908 and remained until 1912. Under Behrens' influence, Mies developed a design approach based on advanced structural techniques and Prussian Classicism. He also developed a sympathy for the aesthetic credos of both Russian Constructivism and the Dutch De Stijl group. He borrowed from the post and lintel construction of Karl Friedrich Schinkel for his designs in steel and glass. Mies worked with the magazine G which started in July 1923. He made major contributions to the architectural philosophies of the late 1920s and 1930s as artistic director of the Werkbund-sponsored Weissenhof project and as Director of the Bauhaus. Famous for his dictum 'Less is More', Mies attempted to create contemplative, neutral spaces through an architecture based on material honesty and structural integrity. Over the last twenty years of his life, Mies achieved his vision of a monumental 'skin and bone' architecture. His later works provide a fitting denouement to a life dedicated to the idea of a universal, simplified architecture Mies died in Chicago, Illinois in 1969

Charles Mackintosh was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1868. In 1884 he began an apprenticeship with John Hutchinson and began attending evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. In 1889 he became an architectural assistant with Honeyman & Keppie. He also enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art. In 1890 he won a travelling scholarship and toured Italy before settling down into practice. While enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh developed an artistic relationship with Margaret MacDonald, Frances Macdonald and Herbert McNair. Known as "The Four", they exhibited posters, furnishings, and a variety of graphic designs in Glasgow, London, Vienna and Turin. These exhibitions helped establish Mackintosh's reputation. With a design philosophy solidly rooted in Scottish tradition, Mackintosh disregarded the architecture of Greece and Rome as unsuitable for the climate or needs Scotland. He believed that a revival of the Scottish Baronial style, adapted to modern society would meet contemporary needs. His buildings clearly demonstrate this belief. Mackintosh created buildings notable for the elegance and clarity of their spatial concepts, the skillful exploitation of natural and artificial lighting, and skillful detailing. He felt that each design should work as a whole to which each carefully contrived detail contributes. In 1913 Mackintosh left the firm of Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh where he had been a partner since 1904. After unsuccessfully trying to establish his own practice, he dedicated his time to landscape painting. He returned to England in 1927 for treatment of cancer of the tongue. An outstanding architect, furniture designer, and painter, who pioneered the Modern Movement in Scotland, Mackintosh's works exist as the greatest flowering of the British Arts & Crafts movement in either Scotland or England. Mackintosh died in London in 1928.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1867. He and his family settled in Madison, Wisconsin in 1877. He was educated at Second Ward School, Madison from 1879 to 1883. After a brief sting at the University of Wisconsin where he took some mechanical drawing and basic mathematics courses, Wright departed for Chicago where he spent several months in J. L. Silsbee's office before seeking employment with Adler and Sullivan. Wright evolved a new concept of interior space in architecture. Rejecting the existing view of rooms as single-function boxes, Wright created overlapping and interpenetrating rooms with shared spaces. He designated use areas with screening devices and subtle changes in ceiling heights and created the idea of defined space as opposed to enclosed space. Through experimentation, Wright developed the idea of the prairie house - a long, low building with hovering planes and horizontal emphasis. He developed these houses around the basic crucifix, L or T shape and utilized a basic unit system of organization. He integrated simple materials such as brick, wood, and plaster into the designs. In 1914 Wright lost his wife and several members of his household when a servant burned down Taliesin, his home and studio in Wisconsin. Following the tragedy, he re-directed his architecture toward more solid, protective forms. Although he produced few works during the 1920s, Wright theoretically began moving in a new direction that would lead to some of his greatest works. Walter Burley Griffin was among the many notable architects to emerge from the Wright studios. In 1932 Wright established the Taliesin Fellowship - a group of apprentices who did construction work, domestic chores, and design studies. Four years later, he designed and built both Fallingwater and the Johnson Administration Building. These designs re-invigorated Wright's career and led to a steady flow of commissions, particularly for lower middle income housing. Wright responded to the need for low income housing with the Usonian house, a development from his earlier prairie house. During the last part of his life, Wright produced a wide range of work. Particularly important was Taliesin West, a winter retreat and studio he built in Phoenix, Arizona. He died at Taliesin West in 1959.

Breuer, Marcel, Hungarian-American architect, designer, and teacher, who helped establish the functionalist principles underlying the International style. Breuer was born in Pécs, Hungary, and studied at the Bauhaus school of design in Weimar, Germany. He practiced architecture in Berlin until the rise of the Nazi Party, fleeing to England in 1933 and then to the United States in 1937. There he helped develop the influential School of Architecture at Harvard University. During the 1950s and 1960s Breuer designed a number of prominent buildings in the United States and Europe. His buildings are generally composed of severe blocks in rough, unfinished stone or concrete and wood.

He was born in Paris where he completed his studies; in 1908 he begins to collaborate with various architectural studios - first in Paris and then in London and Frankfurt. In 1921 he makes his debut at the "Salon d'Automne" where he presents "a restful corner" at the Musée de Crillon. Afterwards, in addition to exhibiting his innovative furniture made of metal tubing at the various "Salons", he realizes numerous architectural projects: cinema, the decoration of shops, restaurants, offices and galleries. Already in 1919 Herbst proceeds along the road of modern design occupynig himself with metal furniture, window displays and indoor lighting. As far as his designs for metal furniture are concerned, in 1926 we can recognize his complete maturation in the rigorous and functional design of his nickle plated metal models.

He is the Danish architect who matser the most personal and successful interpretation of the international functionalism. His architecture includes a considerable number of epochmaking buildings in both Denmark, Germany and Great Britain. Arne Jacobsen initially trained as a mason before studying architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts, Copenhagen, graduating in 1927 From 1927 until 1930, he worked in the architectural office of Paul Holsoe. In 1930, he established his own design office, which he headed until his death in 1971, and worked independently as an architect, interior, furniture, textile and ceramics designer. He was professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen, from 1956 onwards. His best known projects are St. Catherine´s College, Oxford, and the SAS Hotel, Copenhagen. Arne Jacobsen´s designs came into existence as brief sketches and were then modelled in plaster or cardboard in full size. He kept on working until his revolutionary ideas for new furniture had been realized at the utmost perfection. The "Ant" from 1952 became the starting point of his world fame as a furniture designer and became the first of a number of lightweight chairs with seat and back in one piece of moulded wood. Model "3107" from 1955 is often merely called " The Number Seven Chair". It was launched in beech, black and white. The colour scale has through the years been further developed by a/o. the Danish architect Verner Panton and the Danish painter Poul Gernes 1925-96 and today includes a variety of colours in lacquer or lazier as well as beech, maple, ash, and cherry. "3107" has become the most important success in Danish furniture history - manufactured in more than 5 million copies. The Royal Hotel 1956-61, situated in Copenhagen, is one of Arne Jacobsen´s masterpieces. For the decoration of the hotel he designed several pieces of furniture, lamps and fabrics, and also cutlery, glasses, and door handles. As significant counterpoints to the stiffly upright, monumental building his easy chair, the "Swan" and the "Egg", stand out as organic sculptures. During the 1960´es Arne Jacobsen turned to forms as the circle, cylinder, triangle, and cubes. On the whole, his mind as an architect began to influence his design. Both the stainless steel tableware set "Cylinda-Line" and the lamp series "AJ" reflect this. Common to all Arne Jacobsen´s designs is that they have become international design classics. "The Ant" and "The Number Seven" chairs made Arne Jacobsen world famous as a furniture designer and made Fritz Hansen an international manufacturer of design and quality furniture. Fritz Hansen´s collection of timeless furniture includes both well-known Danish classics and more recent furniture series designed by Danish and international designers. source data: scandinaviandesign.com

On August 9. 1878, Eileen Gray was born to an aristocratic family in Enniscorthy, a small market town in south-eastern Ireland, and spent her childhood years there. As a young adult, in order to develop her artistic sensibilities, she entered the Slade School for Fine Arts in London and from there moved to Paris where she would spend most of her working life. Paris at the turn of the century was a creative mecca for visual and performance artists, writers, scientists and philosophers. She was strikingly elegant in appearance with a tall lithe stature and auburn hair. Pictures of her, taken in her late teens and early twenties show her dressed in a Victorian style with thick tresses of dark hair piled on top of her head. In these pictures she seems a timid and slightly sad young woman with a hint of disdain in her expression, which may have been the fashion at the time for young people of her class. Later, in a 1926 photograph by Berenice Abbott she appears as a strong sophisticated woman with a lot of style, a little bit mannish perhaps - a tendancy among the bohemian set at that time - but with a lot of womanly beauty. By the time she was photographed by Abbott (according to Gray's biographer Peter Adams, to be 'done' by Abbott who was a student of Man Ray ' meant you were rated as somebody') she had begun to come into the fulness of her creative energy and had created opportunities for herself to explore her talent.. On a trip to London in 1905 Eileen wandered into a lacquer repair shop: a trip which was to change the course of her creative life. With new-found knowledge and some tools in hand, she returned to Paris, linked up with a master craftsman of lacquer, Sugiwara-san, and from there developed new furniture and assessory designs with striking colors and understated shapes. Her boredom with the flowing, leafy lines of the Art Nouveau movement led to an artistic vocabulary which was more closely related to the De Stijl movement: clean lines and simple forms. The effect was stunning: (see linked Lacquer work file.) Eileen's lacquerwork succeeded in bringing her into the world of furniture and interior design. Her creative genius combined with an innovative sense of form as well as sensitivity to color, were utilized in new and innovative ways, usually to stunning effect.(see linked Furniture/Interior file) In 1921, Eileen opened a store at 217 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore as a direct outlet to the public for her designs. The store met with relative success in spite of the owner's lack of commercial and marketing skills. She continued to hone her designs, building upon a growing reputation for design excellence.

In 1887 Le Corbusier was born as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland). He went to an Art School to become a watch engraver in this centre of Swiss watch industry. However, his teacher, L'Eplattenier, persuaded him to become an architect. After having had problems with Schwob he decided to leave Switzerland for France and to adopt the name Le Corbusier. He swore never to come back to Switzerland. After the World War I he totally changed his style to help build up France. This is where he developed the new construction method that he called 'Plan Libre.' He allowed himself some liberty for the first time when designing Ronchamp in 1950. Often he worked together with his nephew Pierre Jeanneret. Undoubtedly one of his greatest works is the design of the city of Chandigar (India). This project included the design of all the public buildings for this city. In 1965 he died while swimming near his Cabanon in Saint Martin (the south of France).

1904 Born November 17 in Los Angeles. 1906 Family moves to Japan. 1918-22 Returns alone to the United States to attend school in Rolling Prairie, Illinois. After graduation apprentices in sculpture studio of Gutzon Borglum. 1923 Moves to New York. Enrolls in Columbia University's premedical program. 1924 Studies sculpture at Leonardo da Vinci Art School in New York. 1927-28 Receives John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Travels to Paris where he works as an assistant to Brancusi and studies drawing at Academy Grande Chaumičre and Academy Collarosi. 1929 First solo exhibition at the Eugene Schoen Gallery, New York. 1930-31 Studies brush drawing with Chi Pai-shih in Beijing and clay sculpting with Jinmatsu Uno in Kyoto. 1935 Creates first of many stage sets for Martha Graham. 1938 Wins competition and creates relief sculpture for entrance of Associated Press building at Rockefeller Center, New York. 1951 Begins to design akari lamps. 1956 Designs gardens at UNESCO in Paris. 1968 Retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 1974 Participates in Masters of Modern Sculpture show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. 1985 Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum opens to the public in Long Island City, New York. 1986 Represents the United States at the Venice Biennale. 1987 Receives the National Medal of Arts. 1988 Dies December 30 in New York.

Eero Saarinen was born in Kirkkonummi, Finland in 1910. He studied in Paris and at Yale University, after which he joined his father's practice. Eero initially pursued sculpture as his art of choice. After a year in art school, he decided to become an architect instead. Much of his work shows a relation to sculpture. Saarinen developed a remarkable range which depended on color, form and materials. Saarinen showed a marked dependence on innovative structures and sculptural forms, but not at the cost of pragmatic considerations. He easily moved back and forth between the International Style and Expressionism, utilizing a vocabulary of curves and cantilevered forms. Saarinen died in Ann Arbour, Michigan in 1961.

Philippe Starck is a legend. An extraordinary mix of a popstar, crazy inventor and romantic philosopher. His work is omnipresent: from the stylish New York hotels to the catalogue for 4900,-- FF, from the private rooms of a French President to the biggest waste removal center, from hundreds of thousands of chairs and lamps in bars and apartments all over the world to the tooth brushes in bathrooms.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld, born in Bremen in 1900, studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule and after he started his apprenditiceship as a silveremith. In 1923 he was a student at the metal work laboratory of the Bauhaus, ran by Moholy-Nagy, Wagenfeld become assistent in 1926 and teacher in 1929. In the ensuing years he began to work in industry: the Jenaer Glaswerke, the Vereinigte Lausitze Glaswerke, and the Rosenthal porcelain factory. After the war, Wagenfeld moved to Berlin where he taught industrial design, first at the Leibruitz Academy and then at the Fine Arts School. Wagenfeld, well known a "the modern craftsman", managed to fit in with the industrial system. Not surprisingly, his name is closely linked to Bauhaus in Weimar, an astonishing incubator of pioneering experimentation and applied arts.

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1888. After working in his father's joinery business, he apprenticed at a jewellery studio. In 1911 he started his own cabinet-making firm, which he maintained for eight years. In this same period, he studied architecture. Through his studies he became acquainted with several founders of De Stijl. In 1917 Rietveld designed the Red Blue Chair, which signalled a radical change in architectural theory. His unusual furniture designs led to several housing commissions which he invariably designed in a Neo-plastic style. The designs utilized the free and variable use of space and showed a profound understanding of dynamic spatial ideas. In the late 1920s architecture in the Netherlands focused on the idea of "dematerialization". This idea influenced a series of terrace houses with which Rietveld was involved. In 1928 Rietveld acted as a founding member of CIAM. With a few exceptions, the 1930s and 1940s were not particularly productive for Rietveld. Between 1942 and 1948, Rietveld taught at several institutions in the Netherlands. In 1963 he was elected an honorary member of the Bond van Nederlandse Architecten and in 1964 he received an honorary degree from the Technische Hochschule in Delft. Rietveld died in Utrecht in 1964.

George Nelson (1908-1986) was a pioneering modernist who ranks with Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, and Eliot Noyes as one of America's outstanding designers. Nelson's office produced some of the twentieth century's canonical pieces of industrial design, many of which are still in production: the ball clock, the bubble lamp, the sling sofa. Nelson also made major contributions to the storage wall, the shopping mall, the multi-media presentation, and the open-plan office system. The author of this definitive biography was given access to Nelson's office archives and personal papers. He also interviewed more than 70 of Nelson's friends, colleagues, employees, and clients (including the late D. J. De Pree, former head of the Herman Miller Furniture Company and Nelson's chief patron) and obtained many previously unpublished images from corporate and private archives. The full range of Nelson's work is represented, from product and furniture design to packaging and graphics to large-scale projects such as the Fairchild house and the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow. Because Nelson was a serious and original thinker about design issues, Abercrombie quotes extensively from his published and unpublished writings, offering provocative new material to students of design theory and philosophy.

Eero Aarnio (born 1932) is a Finnish interior designer, well known for his innovative furniture designs in the 1960s, notably his plastic and fiberglass chairs. Aarnio studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, and started his own office in 1962. The following year he introduced his Ball Chair, a hollow sphere on a stand, open on one side to allow a person to sit within. The similar Bubble Chair was clear and suspended from above. Other innovative designs included his floating Pastil Chair and Tomato Chair. His Screw Table, as the name suggests, had the appearance of a flat head screw driven into the ground. Aarnio's designs were an important aspect of 1960s popular culture, and could often be seen as part of sets in period science-fiction films. Because his designs used very simple geometric forms, they were ideal for such productions. Aarnio is still active in creating new designs and, while he has also worked with more traditional materials like wood and steel during his long career, still mainly draws products that follow his distinct style of playful shapes and colors only manufacturable in plastic.

The furniture designer Poul Kjaerholm ranks with Arne Jacobsen, Poul Henningsen, Verner Panton, and Hans Wegner as one of the leading exponents of the legendary Danish design. Born in Oster Vra in 1929, Poul Kjaerholm served an apprenticeship in carpentry before studying furniture design at the Copenhagen School for the Applied Arts from 1949 until 1952. Pieces designed by Poul Kjaerholm represent a blend of craftsmanship and new techniques and technologies. This approach is revealed in his diploma piece, the 1951 "PK 25" chair. The frame of this chair is made of cut, chromium-plated sheet steel; the seat and back are of flag cable, wrapped around the frame and pulled taut. The seat furniture Poul Kjaerholm designed can be called Classical Modern, with the stringent formalism of that school moderated by softer, lighter forms and the typical Scandinavian use of such natural materials as wood, leather, and woven cane. Poul Kjaerholm also viewed steel as a natural material, which, in his eyes, possessed aesthetic qualities on a par with those of wood. In 1952 Poul Kjaerholm designed the "PK 0" chair, a two-piece construction of molded laminated wood. The "PK 0" is of sculptural elegance, the fruit of Poul Kjaerholm's preoccupation with organic furniture design such as the "LCW" chair designed seven years previously by Charles and Ray Eames.

Corona was designed by Poul M. Volther and received a lot of acclaim when it was first launched in 1964. Since its making the chair has been shown in a wide variety of fashion features, film and music videos.