Jens Risom, 652 Armchairs for Knoll

JENS RISOM (Copenhagen, 1916 – New Canaan, Connecticut, 2016) for KNOLL.
Pair of Model 652 armchairs. Designed 1941–1943, USA.
Solid birch wood frame. Seat and backrest constructed with cognac-brown leather straps.
Vintage piece. Exhibits wear consistent with age and use.
Measurements: 81 x 60 x 72 cm.

Pair of armchairs from the 600 collection designed by Jens Risom for Hans Knoll, featured in the company’s first catalog in 1942 and considered one of the foundational milestones of modern American design. The frame is made of dark-toned solid wood, with exceptionally sturdy joints and the understated, functional geometry characteristic of the Scandinavian design vocabulary that Risom introduced to the U.S. market. The seat and backrest are constructed using cognac-brown leather straps woven in a basketweave pattern, a technique that directly evokes the original weave made from surplus military nylon straps with which Risom conceived the collection in response to World War II material restrictions.

Model 652 was reintroduced by Knoll in 1994 and is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. These pieces are of considerable interest to collectors of 20th-century design.

Jens Risom was a Danish furniture designer who emigrated to the United States and played a decisive role in introducing Scandinavian design to America. He began his studies at the School of Art and Industrial Design in Copenhagen, where he studied alongside Hans Wegner and Borge Morgensen, among others. In the late 1930s, he traveled to New York, where he exhibited his works at the 1939 World’s Fair in Collier’s “House of Ideas,” located across from Rockefeller Center. Three years later, he founded, together with Hans Knoll, the “Hans Knoll Furniture Company,” for which Risom designed the entire “600” series—comprising an armchair, a lounge chair, and an ottoman—which became a design classic. Some of Jens Risom’s works were influenced by World War II; due to material shortages, he was forced to create, for example, seat covers using parachute straps. Many of his pieces of furniture are now considered modern classics and are on display, among other places, in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). He designed the 654 W Lounge Chair for the New York World’s Fair. He presented the first sketches in 1939 at “Collie’s House of Ideas.” It is part of the “600” series, whose mesh design was a response to material shortages caused by the looming war: it was initially made from parachute straps.