In 1982, Knoll introduced a significant number of new furniture designs and their designers. Among them was, surprisingly, a rocking chair and its designer was Carlos Riart from Barcelona, Spain. The city of his birth was home to the Escuela de Diseo Eina, where he eventually studied industrial design and received his degree, and taught there from 1976 to 1978.1
Riart practiced general industrial design throughout the 1970s and his designs won several design awards that brought him notoriety. Being based in Barcelona, Knoll approached him to design a chair to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the chair Mies van der Rohe designed for the Barcelona Pavilion constructed at the Barcelona Industrial Exposition of 1929.
Rather than use steel for the frame of the chair, Riart chose wood, and rather than a four-legged chair, he chose to mount the legs of the chair on two curved sections so it would rock. Knoll introduced the No. 790 chair made of ebony and amaranthe with mother-of-pearl inlays, and the No. 795 made of American holly with ebony inlays.2
The Riart Rocker was hand-crafted from 1982 through 1988.3 It was awarded the IBD Award and the Roscoe Award in 1983 and the AFIFAD Award in Barcelona in 1987.4
1. “Carles Riart,” Archiproducts. https://www.archiproducts.com/en/designers/carles-riart.
2. Knoll Catalog & Price List, May 1984, 77.
3. Brian Lutz. Knoll – A Modernist Universe. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. 2010. 207.
4. KnollStudio Price List 1988. 102.