Bertoia, Harry (10 March 1915–06 November 1978), sculptor and designer, was born in San Lorenzo, near Udine, in northeastern Italy, the son of Giuseppe Bertoia, a miner and laborer. His mother’s name is unknown. He was given his English name by his father, who had previously lived in Canada. As a teenager Bertoia emigrated with his father to Canada and then to Detroit, where his brother had earlier settled. Bertoia enrolled in Cleveland Junior High School in Detroit. Because of his talent in drawing he was allowed to enroll in a special class for artistically gifted students at Cass Technical High School, also in Detroit, where he received his first formal training in art, including metalsmithing. In 1936 he attended the School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts on scholarship to study painting and drawing. In 1937 Bertoia received another scholarship based on his metalwork to attend the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan....
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Bertoia, Harry (1915-1978), sculptor and designer
Kay Koeninger
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Eames, Charles (17 June 1907–21 August 1978), architect, furniture designer, and filmmaker
Stephen Leet
Eames, Charles (17 June 1907–21 August 1978), architect, furniture designer, and filmmaker, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Charles Ormond Eames, a Pinkerton security officer, and Marie Celine Adele Pauline Lambert. In 1921 Eames’s discovery of photographic equipment belonging to his father, who had died that year, initiated his lifelong interest in photography. He began his formal architectural education at Washington University in St. Louis on a scholarship in 1925. Prior to his enrollment, Eames had worked as a laborer with the LaClede Steel Company and as a designer of electrical lighting fixtures with the Edwin F. Guth Fixture Company, and while attending the university he worked summers as a draftsman in a St. Louis architectural office, Trueblood and Graf. He left school in 1928, his sophomore year. Despite his lack of a formal degree in architecture, other jobs and contacts in St. Louis substantially contributed to his education and to the development of his interests and skills in all aspects of design....
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Eames, Charles (17 June 1907–21 August 1978)
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Hunzinger, George Jakob (1835-1898), furniture designer and manufacturer
Peter Swift Seibert
Hunzinger, George Jakob (12 September 1835–1898), furniture designer and manufacturer, was born in Tuttlingen, Germany. The names of his parents, who eventually divorced, are not known. Little is known of his early years in Germany. His family is alleged to have descended from a long line of cabinetmakers who worked near the German-Swiss border. Immigrating to America in 1859 after his father’s remarriage, Hunzinger was part of a large mid-nineteenth-century movement of German cabinetmakers who came to Brooklyn and New York City. He married Marie Susanne Grieb, also an immigrant from Tuttlingen, on Christmas Day 1859. They eventually had eight children. Their two sons both followed their father as furniture makers and designers....
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Jelliff, John (1813-1893), furniture designer and manufacturer
Ulysses G. Dietz
Jelliff, John (30 July 1813–02 July 1893), furniture designer and manufacturer, was born in Saugatuck, Connecticut, the son of Hezekiah Jelliff and Nancy Bennett, farmers. In 1828 Jelliff was apprenticed by his parents to Alonzo W. Anderson, a wood-carver in New York City. Two years later his apprenticeship was transferred to cabinetmakers Lemuel M. and Daniel B. Crane in Newark, New Jersey. Jelliff was made a freeman in Newark in 1835. He married Mary Marsh of Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1836; they had ten children, three of whom died in childhood....
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Knoll, Florence (24 May 1917–15 January 2019), architect, furniture designer, and business executive
Jeffrey Cronin
Knoll, Florence (24 May 1917–15 January 2019), architect, furniture designer, and business executive, was born Florence Marguerite Schust in Saginaw, Michigan, to Frederick Emanuel Schust, a Swiss-born superintendent of a commercial bakery, and Mina Matila Haist. Orphaned at age fourteen, she was under the care of a legal guardian, family friend Emile Tessin, who enrolled her in ...
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Lloyd, Marshall Burns (1858-1927), inventor and manufacturer
Bruce E. Seely
Lloyd, Marshall Burns (10 March 1858–10 August 1927), inventor and manufacturer, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of John Lloyd and Margaret Commee. Lloyd’s parents were English immigrants who initially had settled in Canada and moved back to a farm in Meaford, Ontario, shortly after their son’s birth. As a youth, Lloyd had a limited formal education but exhibited an inventive bent and keen ambition. At age fourteen he worked in a country store. Then he invented a fish spear, caught fish, and sold them door-to-door, devised a clothes hamper and a spring bed, worked in a grocery store in Toronto, peddled soap, delivered mail by dogsled, and finally joined a land rush in Winnipeg. Speculating in land using his savings from waiting tables, he accumulated several thousand dollars. He was eighteen years old....
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McCobb, Paul Winthrop (5 June 1917–10 Mar. 1969), painter, decorator, and furniture-and-industrial designer
Jeffrey Cronin
McCobb, Paul Winthrop (5 June 1917–10 Mar. 1969), painter, decorator, and furniture-and-industrial designer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Raymond Winthrop McCobb, a department-store clothing salesman and buyer, and Winifred Leontine Caulfield, a stenographer. Raised in the Boston suburbs of Medford and Somerville, he completed two years of high school. With aspirations of becoming an artist, he subsequently traveled across the country while painting and sketching. After returning to the Boston area, he studied with private tutors and briefly at the Vesper George School of Art. A devotee of abstract painting, he also painted and studied at the seaside art colony in Rockport....
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Sypher, Obadiah Lum (1833-1907), antique dealer and furniture manufacturer
F. J. Sypher
Sypher, Obadiah Lum (10 October 1833–18 August 1907), antique dealer and furniture manufacturer, was born in Flushing, New York, the son of Abraham Sypher, a miller, and Abigail Ann Lum. Soon after Obadiah’s birth, the family moved to the township of Blooming Grove, in Orange County, New York, a region where large crops of wheat were grown and ground in gristmills along the streams. As the American West opened to farming, gristmills in New York became unprofitable, however, so they were shut down or redesigned for other uses. In 1850 Obadiah was living with his father and working as a miller. But in 1860 he was no longer living at home, and by 1863 he had moved to Manhattan, where he was working as a clerk in a furniture store owned by Daniel Marley. It is not known how Sypher became associated with Marley. It is possible that there was a connection through ...
