Knoll – Pollock Executive armchair chrome base

Charles Pollock’s 1963 Executive Chair features what he described as “rim technology”— the use of a single aluminum band around the chair’s perimeter to hold the design together, structurally and visually. Fifty years after its introduction, the Pollock Chair continues to exude timeless elegance.

Charles Pollock

Pollock, born in Philadelphia, began his design education at Cass Technical High School in Detroit. He later won a scholarship to study at Pratt Institute, where he graduated in 1953. After serving in the US Army for two years, where he was art editor for INFANTRY Magazine; Pollock worked with George Nelson at Herman Miller. In 1958 he left Nelson's office and began a fruitful relationship with Florence Knoll until his retirement in 1965. Vincent Cafiero, a member of the planning unit, saw great promise in the designer and early prototypes of his 657 Lounge: an elegant essay in leather, steel and plastic. Pollock's 1250 series, an innovative collection of management chairs with anstructural aluminum rim, was an instant classic and is still sold today.

Knoll

Knoll uses modern design to connect people to their work, to their lives, to their world. Since 1938, it has been internationally recognized for creating furniture for work and residential environments.

For more than 80 years Knoll has remained true to the Bauhaus design philosophy that modern furniture should complement the architectural space. At Knoll, modern design has been the guiding principle and this passion has been shared by customers and design professionals around the world. The founders, Hans and Florence Knoll, embraced the creative genius of the time.  Supported schools were Bauhaus School and Cranbrook Academy of Art to create new types of furniture and workplace environments.

Their approach, where craftsmanship joins technology through the use of design, sets the perspective and shapes the values that live today. 80 years of historical collaborations, with pioneering modernists and daring contemporary designers, define not only the past but the future through active, recent and future collaborations with Antenna Design, Don Chadwick, Formway Design, Jehs & Laub, Joseph D'Urso , David Adjaye and OMA.