Handkercheif Chair
Artist: Massimo Vignelli
The Handkerchief chair, designed for the Knoll furniture company by Lella and Massimo Vignelli and available in a range of colors, offers a playful take on the traditional stacking office chair. The flowing shape of its synthetic seat is ergonomic and suggests weightlessness, like a handkerchief floating in the breeze. The fruitful, collaborative relationship between husband and wife began in 1961, and the couple founded Vignelli Associates in the United States in 1971. Their work together has encompassed designs for graphics (most notably corporate identity and way–finding systems) as well as interiors, furniture, and industrial products, all executed with an elegant simplicity.
Source: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/1601
For over 50 years, Italian-born husband-and-wife team Massimo and Lella Vignelli collaborated on a variety of now iconic design projects spanning the product, print, interior, exhibition, and industrial arenas.
Massimo Vignelli was born in Milan in 1931. He studied architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan from 1948 to 1950, before going on to study at both the Politecnico in Milan (1950–53) and the University of Venice (1953–57). While still a student, he designed lighting for renowned Murano glassmaker Venini.
Lella Vignelli (née Valle) was born in Udine, Italy in 1934. She studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge from 1955 to 1958, and, before returning to Italy, worked as a junior designer for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In 1962, she graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Venice.
Having married in 1957, the pair established the Lella and Massimo Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan in 1960, focusing on office accessories, home products, graphics, and furniture. The studio’s clients included Pirelli and Olivetti, among others. In 1965, the Vignellis moved to Chicago and founded, along with six other designers, Unimark International (1965–71), which specialized in corporate graphics. Clients included the likes of American Airlines, Knoll, Bloomingdales, Ford, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Notably, Massimo’s prolific print work championed the Helvetica typeface, encouraging its eventual widespread popularity in the US. In 1971, the couple established Vignelli Associates (known from 1978 on as Vignelli Designs) in New York. They continued to work together until Massimo’s passing in May of 2014.
The Vignellis can be credited with helping to bring contemporary Italian design to the US. Their shared aesthetic celebrates balance, elegance, and simplicity, and embraces the notion that a designer should be able to design anything and everything. Notable projects include, among others, the stackable Knoll Handkerchief Chair (1982–87); colorful, molded melamine Heller Stacking Dishes (1964); and the 1972 New York City subway map. In addition to their design work, both have taught, lectured, written, and served on a variety of juries and boards throughout their careers. Their work has been exhibited internationally in a variety of exhibitions, including, in 1980, a retrospective at New York’s Parsons School of Design. In 1982, the Vignellis were awarded the AIGA Gold Medal. In 2008, the couple donated their complete design archive to the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York; the archive is now housed in a 2010-erected building of their own design, the Vignelli Center for Design Studies.
Source: https://www.pamono.co.uk/handkerchief-chair-by-lella-massimo-vignelli-for-knoll-inc-knoll-international
Vignelli Designs brought elegance and design to the too-often styleless high density stacking chair with Handkerchief. Intended to evoke the windblown contours of a handkerchief floating through the air, the generously scaled, ergonomically sculpted shell offers spacious comfort and ample support.
In 1968 Vignelli was contracted by Knoll to re-envision the corporate identity and graphics program, resulting in the Knoll logo in Helvetica and the introduction of Pantone Super Warm Red as the company color. The work done for Knoll, in addition to giving us our signature graphics, launched the Vignellis to international renown as premier modern graphic designers.
In 1983 they returned to Knoll to design the Handkerchief Chair. Using compression molded plastics, they conducted a fabrication and design investigation that lasted 5 years, and ultimately captured the lightness and organic ease of a handkerchief drifting in the wind.
The firm introduced the Paperclip table in 1994 as a complement to the Handkerchief. Massimo Vignelli: “We wanted to give these chairs their own table: same lightness, same feeling, same uses.” Echoing the bent wire base of the chair, and the overall visual lightness achieved by the signature seat, the designers were able to translate the essence of what made the Handkerchief so elegant to the Paperclip Table.
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Source: https://www.knoll.com/product/handkerchief-chair?section=design
