Knoll, Florence

Knoll, Florence (Florence Margaret Schust Knoll Bassett)

(1917–  ) designer; born in Saginaw, Mich. After architecture and design study and work with Eliel Saarinen, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe, she joined the Hans G. Knoll furniture company (1943) where she perfected such office features as the executive table desk and the boat-shaped conference table. Fabric walls and natural materials in her institutional and commercial interiors humanized the International style. Marrying Knoll in 1946, she headed the company after his death (1955–59). In 1965 she started a private practice.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.