Post No. 1 – Charles Pollock, Ron Sekulski and I; February 6, 2025
In 1973 I was in the middle of my studies at Pratt Institute working toward my degree in Industrial Design. One of my professors was Rowena Reed Kostellow. She announced in class one day that Charles Pollock, a Pratt graduate and a designer for Knoll would be coming to the campus to give a slide presentation of the Knoll au Louvre exhibition held at the famed Paris museum in 1972.
Pollock arrived at Pratt Studios and Reed Kostellow proudly introduced her former student. With Pollock was Ron Sekulski, his assistant and himself a Pratt graduate. The slide show started and Pollock launched into a brief history of Knoll, his first chair for Knoll, the No. 657 armchair, followed by his immensely successful No. 1250 Series executive chair, and then on to the Knoll au Louvre exhibition itself.
I was enthralled by what I saw. After the presentation, there was a question-and-answer session. I approached Ron, introduced myself and asked if Mr. Pollock hired summer interns. He took me over to Pollock, I posed the question, and he said, “Bring me your portfolio and I will let you know my decision,” or words to that effect.
Pollock’s home and design studio was in Queens. The NYC subway system got me to my station stop, then I walked a few blocks to his home, toting my portfolio. Pollock’s wife Maud greeted me at the door and took me into the living room where Charles Pollock was waiting. He pointed to a highback lounge chair with ottoman and said, “Sit down and tell me what you think.” This was the first prototype based off his executive chair with polished and plated aluminum extrusion rim. It was supremely comfortable, but, he told me, the shell design needed refinement.
He asked to see what I had in my portfolio so I showed him the drawings, renderings and some photos I had taken. He seemed favorably impressed and agreed to have me work helping Ron in the basement studio. The summer of 1973, I assisted Ron in the development of the second highback lounge chair prototype. Ron handled design development while I did nothing more challenging than mixing plaster of Paris, sanding molded parts and wielding cans of black spray paint. Pollock would come down for his upstairs office and stopped in daily to direct progress.
I worked at the Pollock studio with Ron the following summer. The highback lounge chair was never approved for production by Knoll, although the ottoman had briefly been a production item in the late 1960s. Ron went on to become a successful industrial designer in his own right. I moved up to Connecticut after graduating from Pratt, working for a number of design offices in Fairfield County. In 1981, I moved to Florida and transitioned from industrial design to electro-mechanical design where there were more opportunities for work. My dreams of furniture design faded away but my appreciation for Knoll furniture remained
Post No. 2 – Restoring a Charles Pfister No. 3015 Table; March 15, 2025
Any piece of furniture will experience wear over a period of years or even decades. This is particularly true of seating, whether it is a chair, settee, sofa or some other kind furniture. The most common restoration of seating is reupholstery. Tables, desks, storage cabinets and related casegoods require different skills only acquired from years of experience from building custom pieces or restoring existing furniture. A number of specialist companies in the United States and in Europe can perform this work equal to the furniture’s original manufacture. One of the most accomplished in this regard is Classic Design in Torrance, California. Established in 1986 by Raoul Benassaya, this company has built a welll-deserved reputation for craftsmanship and a long list of satisfied customers. It can perform design and manufacture of custom pieces as well as reupholster mid-century to late century pieces from Knoll, Herman Miller and other manufactuers.
In 2015, Classic Design received a fire-damaged Charles Pfister table in need of restoration. Originally manufactured in Italy, the table had been ordered in an off-white polyester finish for the table top with polished chrome legs. Several places on the table top had damage down to the hardwood core and the table edges displayed chips in the finish. The chrome trim along the edges was bent in several places. Pfister tables had not been manufactured in more than twenty years and could not be replaced. The owners asked if it could be restored and the answer was yes.
The legs and edge trim were removed from the table top. Weeks of restoration work followed. Special effort was made to color match the original polyester finish. The chrome trim was meticulously straightened and the legs likewise restored to as-new condition. When the restoration was completed the client was shown the finished work and they were extremely pleased. For the collector of Knoll furniture, finding a restoration firm like Classic Design can heighten the pleasure of ownership.
Post No. 3 – Knoll Reissues; May 17, 2025
Furniture designs released by Knoll typically have long production lives. This is evidenced by their continued strong sales, or sufficient to justify it’s production. Sometimes diminished sales coupled with the desire to introduce a new product will result in discontinuing production. Since becoming Senior Vice President of Design for Knoll in 1922, he has reviewed several iconic designs that were out of production and felt them worthy of reintroduction. Some of these are shown below.
The Richard Schultz Leisure Collection
The Richard Schultz Leisure Collection of outdoor furniture was introduced in 1966 and offered for several decades before Knoll stopped manufacturing it. In 2012, Knoll chose to reintroduce the Leisure Collection, and introduce some other pieces Schultz had designed but had not been manufactured. In addition, this furniture was now available in various colors.
The Charles Pollock No. 657 Armchair
When I was interviewed for a summer intern job by Charles Pollock at his home and design studio in Queens, NY, in his living room he had an example of the first chair he designed for Knoll. It was known just by its product number: 657. The chair, comprised of steel tubing, cast aluminum frame, phenolic arms and leather sling seat with upholster foam cushion, was introduced in 1960 and sold reasonably well. Pollock’s 657 chair remained in production for over a decade. It was listed in the Contract/Residential Furniture Price List 1977/78 (page 131-132 in Residential) but was not listed in the Residential Price List of February 1981. Decades later, Knoll decided to reintroduce this chair in 2014. Once a collectible, you can now order it once again from Knoll.
Tobia Scarpa Bastiano Collection
Tobia Scarpa’s Andre tables of polished and chrome plated steel and thick tempered glass tops were quintessential products in the Knoll catalog during the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s. Scarpa followed his table designs with a comfortable seating group of lounge chair, settee and sofa he called the Bastiano Collection introduced in 1969. These remained in production for many years but were eventually discontinued in 1989. In 2022, Knoll resumed production and the chair and settee are shown here.
Mies van der Rohe Tugendhat Chair
In 2022, Johnathan Olivares was appointed Senior Vice President of Design for Knoll. Apart from the continuing search for new designers and their designs, Olivares had a list of discontinued Knoll offerings he wanted to see back in the Knoll catalog. One of them was the very rare Tugendhat Chair designed by Mies van der Rohe at roughly the same time as his iconic Barcelona Chair. The Tugendhat Chair was introduced in the 1960s and was only in production for a few years before it was discontinued. Knoll reissued the chair in 2025, with or without arms, and in a new array of fabrics and colors.
Morrison & Hannah Task Chair
When starting this website, I had the great good fortune to discover Bruce Hannah was still very active as an industrial designer. Hannah and Andrew Morrison had been two of the most prolific designers during the 1970s that Knoll had ever worked with. The design team of Morrison and Hannah continued for a decade before they decided to dissolve their partnership. By then, they had produced dozens of designs of their modular seating groups, chairs and tables. Eventually, all their designs were discontinued.
Olivares knew Hannah was still a practicing industrial designer on Long Island (Andrew Morrison passed in 2012) and wanted to reintroduce one of the M&H team’s designs. Olivares reached out to Hannah to get his thoughts, who agreed it would be a splendid idea. A meeting was scheduled and Hannah met with Olivares at his Knoll office in New York City. That in itself brought back many memories for Hannah. They went over the portfolio of Morrison and Hannah designs, and eventually settled on the 2300 series office chair. This was a practical decision as this particular design would lend itself to the biggest market and would sell the most units. For the 21st century, the chairs would be titled the Morrison-Hannah Task Armchair and the Morrison-Hannah Task Side Chair. If you missed your chance to buy one in the 1970s, now is your chance.
The Joseph D’Urso Occasional Table
When the Joseph D’Urso Collection was introduced by Knoll in 1980, it included several low rolling tables constructed of steel and offered in a variety of tops. Olivares admired them and wanted them back in the Knoll catalog. They became available again as the D’Urso Occasional Tables in 2025.
Post No. 4 – The Montevideo Chair; June 10, 2025
In my junior year of study at Pratt Institute, one of my professors was John Pile. He was a practicing interior designer and he had a passion for furniture. He wrote and published Modern Furniture in 1978 and several more books on interior design in the years following. Prof. Pile let it be known he had a rabid hatred of fake woodgrain and vinyl upholstery. Naturally, he wanted his students to try their design aspirations on furniture and one of the requirements was to make drawings and sketches which he would critique. Once the design was approved we had several weeks to make a scale model of the furniture and bring it to class for a design review.
I first designed a meeting table with tubular steel base and rosewood top. I made a model using solid brass rod which I had chrome plated, and searched several locations in Manhattan to obtain a solid rosewood plank that I cut to size, sanded and then polished. I assembled this to the base with miniature screws. Prof. Pile gave me a positive critique and the next challenge was to design an office chair.
I had been impressed with Don Petitt’s bentwood frame office chair he had designed for Knoll and in studying it, wondered if I could do something similar in tubular steel–a material used in furniture design for decades. For the model, I again used solid brass rod which I bent to shape using conical-tip pliers to form the seatback, arm and legs. I had to scrap the first two attempts but the third one was what I wanted. I then polished the frame and base pieces and took it to a chrome plating shop. I made the seat shell from styrene plastic, painted black. The cushions was shaped from balsawood, then upholstered in fine grain leather. The photos here show the result.
The day came for the students put their design before Prof. Pile and receive his critique. Although of conventional design, he was pleased with what I had achieved and I would like to think I was one of his best students that year. I thoroughly enjoyed his class, and working in Charles Pollock’s studio in Queens over two summers gave me the belief I could eventually become a furniture designer after I graduated. I graduated from Pratt in June 1975, which, as I write, was fifty years ago.
I later took photographs of the model and made dimension drawings and kept them in a file folder for years after graduating. I named the chair after my birthplace in Montevideo, Ururguay. My family moved back to the United States in 1954, and promptly forgot what little Spanish I knew as a child. Upon graduating, I was eager to get out of Brooklyn and up to Connecticut in Fairfield County. I had lived the city life for four years and very much liked the lush green areas of the nearby state. Among my boxes of stuff was the file folder with the drawings and photos of the Montevideo Chair. Below are a few of the drawings.
I lived in Connecticut for six years, then moved to Florida. I discovered there were no industrial design offices in Orlando, but there was design engineering work and started contracting as a job shopper working through technical recruiters. I went to work for Disney Ride and Show Engineering on the EPCOT project and was there for three years until the project I was working wound down. My next job was only a phone call away and my recruiters with different firms kept me working. But in my need to keep working, I never got the chance to work on a furniture project.
Decades later, while going through a banker box of material I came across the file folder with the Montevideo Chair. I wondered if I could interest a furniture manufacturer in the design. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I said to myself. Because of my two summers working for Charles Pollock, I naively thought I would submit the design to Knoll to see if they might be interested. I had created other furniture designs as well and had used Computer Aided Design to create them. I learned that Benjamin Pardo was Director of Design and Senior Vice President of Knoll at the time. My letter to him got a positive response and he asked I send the designs to him for consideration.
I sent the materials off to Pardo expectantly, but unknowingly. This was years before I was to learn the truth about any new designs Knoll might consider. That truth was what Bruce Hannah told me in my interview with him. That truth was what he and Andrew Morrison learned early in their design careers: The Power of the Prototype. Any designer can produce drawings and models, which has to be done initially. However, the full-size working prototype proves the designer can deliver a chair, table, desk–whatever–that can honestly be evaluated to be considered for production.
When Pardo saw no evidence of me having built a prototype, the design materials were returned to me. Pardo’s brief letter to me said my designs did not meet Knoll’s future marketing requirements. A clever name was no substitute for a prototype one can sit in.
Post No. 5 – The Summer I met Raymond Lowey and Syd Mead; July 28, 2025
Having applied to Pratt Institute and being accepted, my father spoke with a design engineer he knew at DuPont Corporation in Wilmington, Delaware saying I had been accepted. The design engineer said he knew William Snaith, who was a partner in the design firm Raymond Lowey & William Snaith in New York City. He told me father he would speak with William Snaith and see if I could work there for the summer just before I was to enter Pratt. This would be the summer of 1971. Mr. Snaith said their company welcomed summer students, so a start date was set for some time in June. Then my father informed me the most affordable housing for me in Manhattan would be the West Side YMCA, so he reserved a room for me, prepaid the first two weeks, and the rest was on me. My father was unaware, and I had no idea, that the demographic for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) had changed completely, and I would discover that myself that summer.
With nothing more than a suitcase, my father put me on a train at the Wilmington Station and I took the several hour train ride up to New York City. At the Manhattan station, I got off the train, took a cab to the Westside YMCA off Central Park West and went to the front desk. I checked in and was given the key to my room. I was told there was a cafeteria downstairs where I could eat my meals. I went to my room, unpacked the suitcase, stored it in the closet, then went down to the cafeteria for a meal. It was the Saturday before the Monday I was to start at Raymond Lowey & William Snaith Associates, so after calling my parents to let them know I was settled in, I decided to walk down to Columbus Circle and take in the Big City. Sunday morning after breakfast I walked the route to the address the design offices were located on 59th Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue. I noted the time it took.
I got to the offices Monday morning, gave my name to the receptionist, said Mr. Snaith was expecting me and I sat down. Several minutes later, a secretary came out to meet me and take me to Mr. Snaith’s office. He informed me I would be a “runner”, someone who got anything that was needed on short notice and help in other ways. In short, I was an errand boy. Wednesday of that week around 10 AM I was talking with someone in the general design room. All the chatter died down, I turned around and looked up at Raymond Lowey. He wore a double-breasted business suit.
“You must be Anthony,” Lowey said. “Yes, sir!” I answered smartly. He welcomed me to his firm and said he hoped I would learn a good deal about design and the design process working there that summer. It was clear everyone in the room had the greatest respect for him. As I was to learn, he was one of the most respected industrial designers in the world.
The following week, I was working with a junior designer on something, when he said, “How would you like to meet Syd Mead?” I was a virtual clean slate when it came to knowledge about designers and illustrators, so not wanting to display my ignorance, I simply said, “Sure!”
Syd Mead had his own office at Lowey & Snaith Associates. I said it was a pleasure to meet him, he said the same and went immediately back to the illustration he was working on. By 1975. Mead had become a legend in the industrial design world, drawing contracts with Fortune 500 companies to illustrate their current and future products. Mead created a great deal of product illustration for Lowey & Snaith Associates’ client companies and I would find previous Mead projects stored in overhead storage cabinets, drafting drawers–just about anywhere.
The rest of my summer was a blurr and I began my freshman courses at Pratt that fall. Fast forward….director Ridley Scott was doing production design research for Blade Runner when he came across a copy of the book, Sentinel published by Dragon’s Dream in 1979. This book was a collection of Syd Mead’s futurist concept artwork, and Scott was intrigued with Mead’s illustration style. In Paul M. Sammon’s book Future Noir – The Making of Blade Runner, Scott was quoted as saying: “A lot of the art in Sentinel was a bit too futuristic for what I had in mind for Blade Runner. But from his photographic specific style, and the other elements I could already see in his art, I had the feeling Syd Mead would be able to pull back on his ‘Flash Gordon’ tendencies and place his visions within our own film’s time period. I was specifically impressed with his automotive designs. I felt I might be on to something…we formally approached Syd with the idea of working on Blade Runner.“
I was living in Orlando, Florida in 1982 when Blade Runner was released. Select theater locations around the United States were chosen to show the film in 70mm format, which was the IMAX of its day. Orlando had one theater that had a 70mm projector, so I bought a ticket to see it. I had seen Star Wars in 70mm in New York City and was blown away by the scope and resolution of the film, so I had high expectations for Blade Runner. It was a phenominal experience.
Post No. 6: Knoll Celebrates 60 Years of the Charles Pollock Executive Chair; September 1, 2025
After Knoll introduced Charles Pollock’s leather sling armchair (Cat. No. 657), the designer began the design an executive chair. Pollock worked on the design, scale models and prototypes with Don Albinson in the Design Development Group. Pollock envisioned the chair with a polished aluminum frame with a black plastic shell and an integrated upholstered seat and back cushion in a range of fabrics and leathers.
With discussions between Pollock and Albinson, detail design of the aluminum extrusion emerged having a eliptical cross section with a slot to retain the lip of the plastic shell and stamped steel seat pan for mounting the base, and a retaining groove to receive a shaped plastic welt with edge stitched to the upholstery. Considerable effort went into this hidden feature of the extrusion involving ease of assembly while ensuring retension of the upholstery. Knoll documents the design was completed by Pollock in 1963. Albinson was assisted by Charles Helms in the design of the retaining features of the extrusion. Knoll filed a patent for: CONNECTOR MEANS FOR UPHOLSTERY- FRAME CONNECTION on June 10, 1965. Patent No. 3, 298,743 was granted January 17, 1967.
The Knoll 1250 Series Executive Chair designed by Charles Pollock was introduced in 1965. It was offered as a swivel arm and armless chair with casters, swivel side chair with and without arms, and side chair with and without arms. The polished and chrome plated frame with black injection molded shell and the entire pallet of fabric and leather upholstery made a supreme industrial design statement having remarkable comfort. The Pollock Chair became the premier choice for conference rooms and executive offices around the world and has remained one of Knoll’s bestselling catalog items.
Post No. 7: Pascal Mourgue – Contract becomes collectible; September 15, 2025
In France, L’Ecole Boulle is known for graduating noted artists and L’Ecole Nationale des Artes Decoratifs a broad range of design field creatives. Olivier Mourgue (b. 1939) most certainly influenced his younger brother Pascal (b. 1943) to follow in his footsteps and attend these same schools. The Mourgue brothers had a significant impact on French and European arts and product design.
Pascal Mourgue designed a range of consumer products from the latter sixties into the eighties. Knoll International based in France at the time knew of his body of work and in 1985 collaborated with the designer on a collection of conference tables. Table tops were offered in square, half-round, round and racetrack configuration; the rectangular sections could be ganged together to make any needed length conference table.1
When designing the table legs, Mourgue took his design inspiration from Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat built in Brno, Czech Republic in the late 1920s. The interior of the villa featured polished four-legged vertical beams, most notably in the living room but also seen in other areas of the villa.2
Knoll introduced the Pascal Collection of Conference Tables in 1985. Tabletops were 1-3/16-inch thick available medium red mahogany, dark red mahogany, medium brown mahogany, grey mahogany or grey bird’s eye maple veneer. The bullnose edge was either black extruded PVC or matching solid wood as ordered. The legs were extruded aluminum and available polished or finished in black epoxy.
In 1990, marble tops became available for the Pascal Collection. These were offered in grey Grigio Bardiglio, black Nero Marguina, white Calacatta, red Rosso Collemandina, and green Verde Alpi.3 Mourgue continued his design career for the remainder of the eighties and into the nineties. The square, round and smaller racetrack conference tables are ideal in the home for the Knoll collector. The Pascal Collection of tables remained available from Knoll through 2022.4
1. KnollStudio Price List 1988. 140-147.
2. Vitra Design Museum, Mies van der Rohe Architecture and Design in Stuttgart, Barcelona, Brno. Skira Editore (1998). 194-198
3. KnollStudio Price List 1990. 130-137.
4. KnollStudio Price List October 2022. 438-443. The Pascal Collection was not listed in the KnollStudio Price List July 2023.