Born in Paris in 1932, Marc Held became one of the most prominent architects and industrial designers to emerge from post-war France. When he founded the design firm Archiforme in 1960 and drew other designers to his small office, he would soon make a name for himself.
His first furniture designs were manufactured of solid teak. He began experimenting with resin-impregnated fiberglass as a means of getting unique compound curves into furniture design. The fiberglass pieces were made using plaster molds. By 1965, he had created a fiberglass chair with a shallow curved bottom, arms and a high fan-back, with upholstered seat and back. The person seated could gently rock and easily pivot the chair. It featured counterweights and limit stops in the back. Held gave it the name Culbuto and it went into limited production through 1967.1
That was the year Robert Cadwallader, executive vice president of Knoll at the time, discovered the curious-looking chair in a Parisian furnishings store called L’Echoppe operated by Held and his wife. “I thought it was a crazy looking chair, but when you sat down in it you had a wonderful feeling,” Cadwallader said several years later.2
Cadwallader was intrigued with the chair and impressed with the range of products Held had designed. Cadwallader contacted Yves Vidal, president of Knoll International headquartered in Paris, regarding Held’s chair. Vidal most likely arranged a meeting with Held to learn of the designer’s interest in designing a collection for Knoll. Held, of course, knew of Knoll’s history and reputation, and he welcomed the opportunity.
The next three years Held spent designing and building prototypes in his Paris studio, while working on projects for other clients. Three designs emerged: an armchair, a highback chair (not like Culbuto) and an ottoman. The prototypes were produced in Held’s studio to verify the motion of the chairs and ottoman and determine the strength needed for durability.
“In the beginning,” Held said in 1970, “it was a very baroque-looking chair. As I worked on it, the chair became simpler and simpler, especially the back. All the useless things disappeared.”3
The Marc Held Collection for Knoll entered production in 1972.4 Knoll International produced a brochure showing the Marc Held Collection, with Held shown in his studio, standing near a workbench on which were plaster molds for his chairs.
When Florence Knoll Bassett traveled to Paris in 1972 to attend the Knoll au Louvre exhibition with her husband Harry Hood Bassett, she toured the exhibit and was impressed with Massimo Vignelli’s ingenious means of displaying the Knoll pieces stacked in plexiglass enclosures. Vidal persuaded Knoll Bassett to come to Knoll’s Paris showroom on the Boulevard Saint-Germain for a meeting with Marc Held. When she arrived, Vidal took her to the Held Collection in the showroom, asked her to sit in the Held highback armchair, had Held sit in the armchair and then Vidal sat on the ottoman as if he were sitting in a saddle. Vidal had arranged for a photographer to record the historic moment and this photograph appears on the Marc Held website.5
The No. 1775 highback chair, 1765 chair and the 1769 ottoman6 were manufactured by Knoll from 1972 through 1975.7
1. https://marcheldarchitect.com/en/design/seat_culbuto.htm
2. Rita Relf, “The Evolution of a Rocking Chair.” The New York Times, June 30, 1970.
3. Ibid.
4. “ Marc Held Collection.” https://www.knoll.com/the-archive/.
5. ‘Seats for “Knoll International” / 1967-1970’. https://marcheldarchitect.com/en/design/seats_knoll.htm. Note: these dates conflict with the actual production years by Knoll. Regarding this photograph, it is significant because Florence Knoll Bassett retired from Knoll in 1965, and she is shown with a designer for Knoll, in this case Marc Held. Most famously, she did a 1957 photo shoot with Eero Saarinen discussing the Model 151 pedestal chair (Brian Lutz. Knoll – A Modernist Universe. 67).
6. Knoll International Furniture Price List 1973. 49-50.
7. https://www.knoll.com/the-archive/.