Armchair Model 654 by Jens Risom for Knoll

The Danish-American furniture designer Jens Risom (1916-2016) trained at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen and then worked for a year in Stockholm before emigrating to the USA. There, in 1942, he was engaged by Hans Knoll as the first designer for his newly founded furniture company and designed 15 pieces for the first Knoll catalogue of the same year. His best-known design, the Risom Chair (Model 666WSP), consists of a wooden frame with a seat and back woven from surplus cotton/parachute webbing, a choice of material owed to the shortages of raw materials in the war years. After military service in the US Army from 1943 to 1946, Risom founded his own company Jens Risom Design in New York, which he ran until the early 1970s.