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The Tulip chair is one of the most iconic chairs ever made. Designed by Eero Saarinen in 1955-1956 for Knoll Associates.

Eero Saarinen studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 1930's. Some famous alumni of the Cranbrook Academy of Art are Harry Bertoia, Ray Eames, Florence Knoll (founder of Knoll Associates) and more recently Daniel Liebeskind. His father, Eliel Saarinen also an architect, designed a building for the Cranbrook Academy. This is the place where Eero Saarinen met Florence Knoll, the beginning of a long time friendship and partnership. Saarinen designed some of the most modern furniture of the 20th century. Besides furniture, Saarinen is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century. He designed for example terminals for JFK International airport in New York and Washington Dulles International Airport. But also US embassies in Oslo and London. Truly iconic is his work for IBM, he designed several buildings for this company through the US and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

After designing his first successful chair, the Womb chair, Saarinen wanted to design another chair that had the ideal form. The Womb chair is a cozy chair where you can relax and curl up. The Tulip chair had to replace the ugly chairs that where common in American households at the end of the fifties. The existing chairs and tables had too many 'legs', Saarinen created a chair with one leg. This one legged chair had the ideal form to Saarinen. The Tulip chair became one of the classics of mid century modern design.

The Tulip chair is made of a plastic coated cast aluminium base with a supporting moulded fiberglas shell, with a loose upholstered foam cushion added for comfort. At first, the technology wasn't ready for this one piece design. But at the end of 1955 Saarinen had his first prototype of the Tulip Chair. Within months Knoll produces the first models of the Tulip Chair.

Nowadays you can buy a Tulip Chair all around the World in one of the showrooms of Knoll Associates or in any other furniture store. But there are a lot of replicas on the market.

http://www.tulip-chair.org

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