Durability & stability meets vintage appeal in this plush woven synthetic blend (polyester & acrylic). Each of our Vintage Tweed fabrics are richly textured, subtly combining two to three varying colors, which together compose deep earth tones ideal for any piece and any space. Enjoy an iconic mid-century look that is soft to the touch, that won't fade, and that you'll cherish for years to come. Our Vintage Tweed collection is ideal for residential and commercial use. New Zealand Wool Tweed This New Zealand Wool blend has been a choice upholstery solution for designers & manufacturers of iconic original mid-century classics for many decades. This stylish wool blend offers a classic tweed vibe to give your piece a distinctly mid-century look and feel. It is gorgeous, super-soft to the touch and is textured with a subtle two-toned checkered pattern. It regulates temperature well, while still being cozy. Using a combination of premium New Zealand wool (the finest in the world) woven with just the right amount of viscose, this collection is waterproof, anti-electrostatic and stain & flame resistant, making it equally perfect for both residential and commercial use.
Named after it's Scandinavian aesthetic, this tightly-woven blend combines the world's finest wool (from New Zealand) with luscious texture and commercial grade durability, and is available in a carefully selected spectrum of muted tones and pop colors. It's no wonder that this fabric has been a choice fabric option for the designers of original mid-century classics for over 50 years. With a wool content of 85%, our Danish Wool blend offers a softness to guarantee your comfort, and a nylon content of 15% provides performance-grade enhancements. This material is waterproof, flame & stain resistant and anti-electrostatic. This soft Brazilian leather is both durable and lightweight. Migliore is .9mm-1.1mm thick, and the semi-aniline dyeing process preserves the leather's qualities and protects it from wear and staining. It is smooth to the touch and is elegant in appearance. Choose from sleek natural light, medium and dark tones or go bold with our sexy Lipstick Red. Taking durability and thickness to the next level, this Italian-made leather also uses a top-grain, Brazilian hide.
At 1.mm-1.3mm thick, our Premio collection offers a heavier alternative to Migliore -- one that will withstand greater demands in everyday use. The semi-aniline dyeing process will preserve the natural beauty of this leather for years to come. Premio offers a sleek black, a bright white and two grays to fit any space. As its name would imply, Superiore reigns supreme in terms of look, feel and durability. Superiore is a luxury Italian-made leather, uses Italian hides, and is the thicker, full-aniline "next-step-up" to our Premio collection. It is the softest of our leather offerings, yet it's also the thickest, heaviest and most durable (at 1.3mm-1.5mm thick). Dyed throughout the full thickness of the hide, in an array of browns (or a rich Obsidian Black), Superiore is an ultra-high quality leather that will stand the test of time, and hold up well against fading and wear from everyday use. Don't let the name fool you -- no ponies were harmed in the making of this beautiful standout.
This is a hand-worked mixture of European cow skin (with hair) and pure aniline leather. A combination of black, white & brown hairs, each hide is a one-of-a-kind, will vary due to the unique nature and character of cowhide, and is sure to provide any mid-century classic with a distinguished beauty all its own, and a strikingly iconic look that radiates authenticity. Black / Brown / WhiteCharacteristic of the early environment at Knoll, Hans and Florence never demanded that Bertoia design furniture, but instead encouraged him to explore whatever he liked. They simply asked that if he arrived at something interesting, to show them. Bertoia later explained the process: “I went around and discovered, quite soon, that I was not the man to do research. My feeling was that had to come from an inward direction. I began to rely once more on my own body. I began to think in terms of what I would like as a chair. It started very slowly…I came into rod or wire, whether bent of straight.
I seemed to find myself at home. It was logical to make an attempt utilizing the wire. "Once more, I went through the procedure of positioning, considering the possibility of shapes, then relating, of course, what the wire itself could be, what shapes it might take, whether there were any tools to do it with. There are many aspects of the same things coming into one’s mind, but the very first thing was whether a shape would come up that would begin to serve as a chair, sitting on it, etc. One was taking the shape of a side chair; another was beginning to extend to care of the head. This developed to the point where something could be held on to…You know, when you have something in front of you that can really physically be held, it becomes easier to make changes.”Sculptor, furniture and jewelry designer, graphic artist and metalsmith, Harry Bertoia was one of the great cross-disciplinarians of 20th-century art and design and a central figure in American modernism. Among furniture aficionados he is known for the wire-lattice “Diamond” chair (and its variants such as the tall-backed “Bird” chair) designed for Knoll Inc. and first released in 1952.
As an artist, Bertoia is revered for a style that was his alone. Bertoia’s metal sculptures are by turns expressive and austere, powerful and subtle, intimate in scale and monumental. All embody a tension between the intricacy and precision of Bertoia’s forms and the raw strength of his materials: steel, brass, bronze and copper. Fortune seemed to guide Bertoia’s artistic development. Born in northeastern Italy, Bertoia immigrated to the United States at age 15, joining an older brother in Detroit. He studied drawing and metalworking in the gifted student program at Cass Technical High School. Recognition led to awards that culminated, in 1937, in a teaching scholarship to attend the Cranbrook Academy of Art in suburban Bloomfield Hills, one of the great crucibles of modernism in America. There, Bertoia made friendships — with architect Eero Saarinen, designers Charles and Ray Eames and Florence Schust Knoll and others — that shaped the course of his life. He taught metalworking at Cranbrook, and when materials rationing during World War II limited the availability of metals, Bertoia focused on jewelry design.
He also experimented with monotype printmaking, and 19 of his earliest efforts were bought by the Guggenheim Museum. In 1943, he left Cranbrook to work in California with the Eameses, helping them develop their now-famed plywood furniture. (Bertoia received scant credit.) Late in that decade, Florence and Hans Knoll persuaded him to move east and join Knoll Inc. His chairs became, and remain, perennial bestsellers. Royalties allowed Bertoia to devote himself full-time to metal sculpture, a medium he began to explore in earnest in 1947. By the early 1950s Bertoia was receiving commissions for large-scale works from architects — the first came via Saarinen — as he refined his aesthetic vocabulary into two distinct skeins. One comprises his “sounding sculptures” — gongs and “Sonambient” groupings of rods that strike together and chime when touched by hand or by the wind. The other genre encompasses Bertoia’s naturalistic works: abstract sculptures that suggest bushes, flower petals, leaves, dandelions or sprays of grass.