Knoll Saarinen - Round Dining Table
The Knoll Saarinen - Round Dining Table is part of Eero Saarinen’s Pedestal Collection. He resolved the ""ugly, confusing, unrestful world"" underneath tables and chairs. The Round Dining Table is 42” and seats 4-5 people. It has a single, tulip-shaped base, and the tabletops have bevelled edges, a defining accomplishment of modern design.
First, he sketched and then sculpted scaled models to place them in a scaled dollhouse-sized model room to ensure that they looked good in a room. Eero Saarinen used his background in sculpting to explore “probing even more deeply into different possibilities one finds many different shapes are equally logical—some ugly, some exciting, some earthbound, some soaring.” Assisted by Don Petitt of Knoll’s Design Development Group, who introduced several ingenious methods of model making, they worked out the problems arising in production. Full-scale models became furniture tested in the Saarinen house dining room and living room.
MEASUREMENTS:
- Diameter: 91, 107, 120, 137, 152 cm / 35.75, 42.25, 47.25, 54, 60 inch
- Height: 72 cm / 28.25 inch
MATERIALS:
- Base is heavy molded cast aluminum with white or black paint
- Tabletops in a wide range of woods, marbles and granites
HELPFUL NOTES:
- Tabletop features beveled edge
- Top attaches to base with threaded rod
- Greenguard Indoor Air Quality Certified®
Eero Saarinen
Finland, 1910 – 1961
Eero Saarinen, was born in 1910 in Finland and in 1923 the family emigrated to the US. He studied architecture at Yale, graduating in 1934. A Yale scholarship enabled Saarinen to travel to Europe but he returned to the US in 1936 to work in his father’s architectural practice. When his father died in 1950, Eero Saarinen took over the practice. Saarinen taught at Cranbrook Academy where he met Charles Eames in the late 1930s. Experimenting with Eames, Eero Saarinen co-developed new furniture forms and the first designs for furniture made of molded, laminated wood. In 1940 Saarinen and Eames took part in the “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition mounted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
For Knoll International Saarinen designed a great many pieces of furniture, including the 1948 Womb Chair, which was designed to make those seated in it feel as secure and cozy as a fetus in the womb. The Pedestal Group, dating from 1955-56, is collection of chairs and tables made of plastic and featuring only one central leg ending organically in a round disc on the floor. The very successful Tulip Chair belonged to this group. Eero Saarinen says he wanted to abolish the “miserable maze of legs.” In 1951 he designed the Saarinen Collection for Knoll, consisting of the still popular line of Executive Chairs. These chairs transformed the notion of what executive seating could be with its sculptural form and modern finishings.
Knoll has lived their guiding principle, "good design is good business," since 1938. Products are all created to inspire, fit, and last. The Bauhaus philosophy that furniture should complement, not compete with architecture, is central to Knoll’s design. Its extensive portfolio includes office work systems, residential mid-century modern classics, textiles, and accessories.
Designers like Harry Bertoia, Eero Saarinen, Warren Platner, Isamu Noguchi, and Florence Knoll contributed to Knoll’s iconic designs. Knoll invests in research and field studies and explores organizational behavior and technology to ensure quality excellence. As a leader in sustainability, Knoll’s practices reduce waste and conserve resources. Based in Pennsylvania, Knoll has a strong international presence, and 40 products are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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