Harry Bertoia was born in Udine, Italy, in 1915. At the age of fifteen, his
family moved to Canada and then on to Michigan. In 1932 Harry Bertoia was
awarded a scholarship to Cass Technical High School in Detroit, where he
studied painting and sculpture until 1936. Then he spent a year at the art
school maintained by the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. In 1939 he was
awarded another scholarship, this time for the Cranbrook Academy of Art in
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, which had been founded by Eliel Saarinen in 1932.
Harry Bertoia began to teach there in 1939, establishing a workshop for metalwork.
Material shortages during the second world war forced the
Cranbrook Academy to close its doors in 1943. At Cranbrook,
Harry Bertoia met
Charles Eames. In 1943 Harry Bertoia went
to California, where he worked briefly with Charles and Ray Eames
for the Evans Product Company, designing furniture made of bent
laminated wood. In 1943 Harry Bertoia also showed jewelry of his own
design in New York. In 1946 Harry Bertoia became an American citizen.
In the 1940s Harry Bertoia concentrated entirely on furniture-making;
in 1950 he founded a business of his own in Bally, Pennsylvania.
That same year, 1950, saw the beginning of Harry Bertoia's collaboration
with Florence and Hans Knoll, whose acquaintance he had also made at
Cranbrook Academy. Harry Bertoia's first chair design for Knoll, the
"Model 420 Diamond" (1950-1952), featuring moulded mesh of chromium-plated
steel wire, was an immediate bestseller. Harry Bertoia earned enough royalties
from it to be able to devote himself almost exclusively to sculpture from then on.
Harry Bertoia made free-standing metal objects and metal sound sculptures.
The original "Diamond" chair of moulded and welded steel wire is still being
manufactured and marketed by Knoll. Nowadays slightly modified variants are also
sold, such as the "Model 421" with a seat cushion but otherwise the model has remained unchanged.
