Eero Saarinen: Organic Modernism

Eero Saarinen: Organic Modernism

When you picture a single-stem chair, an enveloping shell, a table free of the thicket of legs that clutters a room, you are often picturing, without knowing it, the work of Eero Saarinen. A Finnish-born architect and designer, born in 1910 and dead too soon, in 1961, Saarinen brought to postwar America a vision of modernism less geometric and more sculptural: that of a continuous, organic form, where structure and envelope become one. His work, short but dense, ranges from the armchair to the airport terminal, with the same concern for unity of form.

From Cranbrook to Yale

Eero Saarinen grew up in a setting where architecture was a second language. His father, Eliel Saarinen, a renowned Finnish architect, emigrated to the United States in 1923 and became a central figure of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. There Eero trained in sculpture and furniture drawing before studying architecture at Yale, graduating in the mid-1930s.

Cranbrook mattered a great deal. There Eero became friends with Charles Eames, among others, with whom he explored plywood moulding and won a Museum of Modern Art competition around the turn of the 1940s. It was also at Cranbrook that he met Florence Schust, the future Florence Knoll, who would do much to spread his furniture.

The architect of expressive form

Saarinen's architecture seeks an expressive form, far from the orthodox modernist grid. The TWA terminal at New York's airport, with its concrete shells spread like a bird's wings, is the best-known example. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, whose competition he won in the late 1940s, draws a stainless steel parabola that has become one of America's best-known monuments. Add to these the General Motors Technical Center and the Dulles airport terminal.

Womb and Pedestal: the furniture for Knoll

Saarinen designed most of his furniture for Knoll. The Womb chair, designed in the late 1940s at the request of Florence Knoll, who wanted a seat "you could curl up in," is an upholstered fibreglass shell, enveloping, mounted on a metal base. It broke with the rigidity of traditional seating to offer a free, almost curled-up posture, hence its name.

But it is the Pedestal series, known as Tulip, unveiled in the mid-1950s, that sealed his reputation. In it Saarinen attacked what he called the "slum of legs" beneath tables and chairs: he replaced the four legs with a single central base, in lacquered aluminium, topped by a moulded shell. Chairs, armchairs, tables and stools form a coherent family with a strong continuity of line. While Saarinen dreamed of an object made entirely from a single material, the technical limits of the time required a metal base under a fibreglass shell, a compromise that hardly shows in the silhouette. Production of this series, entrusted to Knoll, has continued without interruption since.

On the vintage market

Saarinen's pieces for Knoll are classics. The Tulip series and the Womb chair are among the most recognisable modernist furniture, and period examples in good original condition are sought after. As Knoll produces these models continuously, the collector's concern is less the model than the dating, the condition of the top (marble, laminate or wood depending on the version) and traceability. We prefer to document these criteria rather than advance a figure.

What we check

For a Tulip table or chair, we check the Knoll marking, the condition of the lacquered base, which is prone to chips and yellowing, the nature and condition of the top, and the soundness of the shell. For a Womb chair, we check the fibreglass shell, the base and the upholstery. Each piece is photographed in natural light, marking included, and its listing states the model, the estimated production period and the condition. Pieces for sale are on the Eero Saarinen page.