In 1965 Florence Knoll retired from Knoll Associates, Inc., where she had served as design director and head of both KnollTextiles and the Knoll Planning Unit. From its founding in the late 1930s, the firm exerted a profound influence on the modern interior through the design and production of furniture and textiles and through its interior design service for private and corporate clients. In this lecture Bobbye Tigerman will trace Florence Knoll’s education and training and explore how she combined the resources of the firm’s three divisions to create the distinctive “Knoll look” and to shape the nature of modern postwar interior design.

Bobbye Tigerman is assistant curator of decorative arts and design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.