Bill Stephens had spent more than a decade at Knoll when he was promoted to Manager of the Design Development Group in 1971. Knoll President, Robert Cadwallader, had received a design proposal from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for an open office landscape system for the Weyerhaeuser Corporation new headquarters building in Tacoma, Washington, so he held meetings with Stephens and the design group to begin the process.
While still head of the Design Development Group in the early 1970s, Stephens began sketches for his own office seating collection, but demands of the job prevented development. He chose to leave Knoll to start his own design firm, Bill Stephens, Inc. He resumed designing the office chairs, he said in an interview, in 1978.1 He filed the first of numerous design patents for these chairs in May 1979.2
Knoll introduced the Stephens Office Seating Collection in 1982. It included an armless task chair, operational armchair, two different management chairs and an executive chair. This collection entered the Knoll office seating catalog that also featured the extensive Diffrient collection, Zapf collection, Pearson collection, and the Morrison & Hannah, Pollock and Saarinen office chairs. This dampened sales of the Stephens chairs, which remained in production only through 1984.3
- Brian Lutz, Knoll—A Modernist Universe. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2010). 211.
- Stephens, William I. Combined Seat and Backrest for a Chair. US Des. 264,910 filed May 11, 1979, and issued June 15, 1982.
- Knoll Catalog and Price List May 1984. 27-36.