(1915-1978)

Italian sculptor, university lecturer and furniture designer Harry Bertoia emigrated to America in 1930. He studied at the Cass Technical High School in Detroit and trained on a scholarship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan. From 1939 to 1943, he set up a metal workshop and began to teach jewelry and metal working.

In 1943, he worked with Charles and Ray Eames for the Evans Product Company where they experimented on molded-plywood seating. In 1950, he established a studio in Pennsylvania and introduced his famous 'Diamond' chair for the Knoll International in 1952. Bertoia was an inventor of form and an enricher of furniture design with his introduction of a new material, he turned industrial wire rods into a design icon.The success was immediate and in the mid-50's the royalties he received for these chairs allowed him to devote himself exclusively to his sculpting career.