Charles Pollock (1930-2013) American, (3) Knoll Executive Rolling Arm Chairs. Beautiful black leather and sleek chrome, one of the most iconic office chair designs in history. Labels on underside indicating they were distributed by Knoll. 

Condition: Cracks in the leather. Commensurate with age. 

Size: 26 1/2 x 27 x 32 in. 

Charles Randolph Pollock was born on June 20th, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a youth he moved with his family to Toledo, Ohio, before they finally settled in Detroit, Michigan. He studied at Cass Technical High School, where he won a scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute of Design in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated in 1953 and was drafted into the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. His first public industrial designs appeared in INFANTRY Magazine, which he was art editor for, while teaching art classes at the base. In 1955 he was honorably discharged and worked for a few months under Donald Deskey, the New York designer acclaimed for creating the Radio City Music Hall. George Nelson, who had first met him while touring Pratt, ran into him on the streets of New York and hired him to work for Herman Miller. While working alongside Charles Eames in 1958 Pollock came up with one of his most iconic pieces, the Swag Leg Armchair, but when Nelson was widely credited as its sole creator he left the firm to work with Florence Knoll at Knoll Studio. His first work for her, the 657 Sling Chair, was so popular that Florence paid for his rent and stipend for the remainder of his time with the company to encourage him to work without restraints or monetary concerns. He created the Pollock Executive Chair in 1963, a remarkably revolutionary design using a single band of aluminum which is still a favorite fixture in the offices of CEOs around the world. When Florence retired in 1965 Pollock found it difficult to adapt to the radical changes in the design world, and moved to Europe, traveling constantly and focusing more on sculpting and painting. In 1982 he was “rediscovered” when his Penelope Chair for the Italian company Castelli brought him international fame as a major breakthrough in passive ergonomics. Pratt Institute honored him with their Excellence by Design Award in 1991, and he began teaching there and abroad, inspiring a new generation of students to adapt his love for continuous curved lines and functionality into their designs. He also advocated for exhaustive sketching of ideas, and retaining all work rather than discarding “failures” as a way of focusing a design aesthetic over time. His chairs were added to permanent displays at the Smithsonian Institution and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and achieved even more recognition when his pieces and those of his fellow designers at Knoll became fixtures of the hit television series Mad Men (2007-2015). In 2012 he introduced his first new product in America since the Pollock Chair, the CP Lounge Collection for Bernhardt Design. Tragically, Pollock died in a house fire in Queens, New York on August 20th, 2013. At the time of his death he was still at work on designs for new chairs, and many of his papers, sketches, and original pieces are now in private, public, and corporate collections throughout North America and Europe.

Cracks in the leather. Commensurate with age.