75 years old and don’t look it! Designed by Eero Saarinen at the behest of Florence Knoll in 1948, the Womb Chair defied the era’s conventions of what a chair could be, both in the techniques and the technology that allowed for its form, and ultimately, in its nonprescriptive function.
It was designed “to answer our primal need for unbound comfort” and even today it is a resonant, evergreen product and maintains its revolutionary power.
Said Florence Knoll at the time, “This was at my specific request because I was sick and tired of those chairs that held you in one position… I said, ‘Why not take the bull by the horns and do the big one first?’ That’s what happened… I wanted a chair that was like a basket full of pillows…I wanted something I could curl up in.”
In a 1949 letter to J. Irwin Miller, Saarinen explained that the chair’s “was designed on the theory that a great number of people have never really felt comfortable and secure since they left the womb.” The Womb chair is still manufactured to its original design and continues to be a top seller for Knoll.
