About Me
Harry Bertoia (b. March 10, 1915 in San Lorenzo, Pordenone, Italy. d. November 6, 1978 in Barto, Pennsylvania, United States) was an Italian-born artist and modern furniture designer.
At the age of 15 he traveled from Italy to Detroit to visit his older brother, however he chose to stay and enrolled in Cass Technical High School, where he studied art and design and learned the art of handmade jewelry making. In 1938 he attended the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, now known as the College for Creative Studies. The following year in 1937 he received a scholarship to study at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where he encountered Walter Gropius, Edmund N. Bacon and Ray and Charles Eames for the first time.
Opening his own metal workshop in 1939 he taught jewelry design and metal work. Later, as the war effort made metal a rare and very expensive commodity he began to focus his efforts on jewelry making, even designing and creating wedding rings for Charles and Ray Eames and Edmund Bacon's wife Ruth. Later in 1943, he married Brigitta Valentiner, and moved to California to work with Charles and Ray for the Evans Product Company. Evans provided technical work for airplane and medical equipment. Bertoia was also drawing training manuals. At this point they began to experiment with molded plywood under the auspices of their Plyformed Products Company, which was later bought out by Evans. With Eero Saarinen they developed a method for making molded plywood splints that would later evolve into processes for designing furniture. Bertoia remained as part of their staff, working on a variety of projects. Three years later he split with the Eames, concerned that his work was not receiving due credit, and preferring to work with metal rather than wood. In the same year he finally became a US citizen.
In 1950, he moved to Pennsylvania, to established a studio, and to work with Hans and Florence Knoll. (Florence was also a Cranbrook Graduate). During this period he designed five wire pieces that became known as the Bertoia Collection for Knoll. Among them the famous 'Diamond chair' a fluid, sculptural form made from a molded lattice work of welded steel.
In Bertoia's own words, "If you look at these chairs, they are mainly made of air, like sculpture. Space passes right through them."
They were produced with varying degrees of upholstery over their light grid-work, and they were handmade because a suitable mass production process could not be found. Unfortunately, the chair resembled an Eames chair so closely that Herman Miller, Eames' distributor, took Knoll to court on the grounds that they were taking wrongful credit for a bent-wire technique owned by the Eames. Herman Miller eventually won and gave Knoll a license to produce the chairs, but knowing that the Eames and Bertoia worked closely for so long, the "genealogy" of inspiration seems difficult and maybe even unnecessary to pin down.
Nonetheless, the commercial success enjoyed by Bertoia's diamond chair was immediate and in the mid-50's the chairs, being produced by Knoll, sold so well, that the royalties he received for them allowed him to devote himself exclusively to sculpture. The sculptural work that he produced on his own explored the ways in which metal could be manipulated to produce sound. By stretching and bending the metal, he made it respond to wind or to touch, creating different tones. He performed with the pieces in a number of concerts and even produced an album, Sonambient, of the music made by his art.His "Sounding Sculpture" can be found in the plaza of The Aon Center, Chicago's second tallest building. Another "Sounding Sculpture", considerably smaller than the one mentioned above, is featured in the Rose Terrace of the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Bertoia was the sculptor commissioned to create the Marshall University fountain in Huntington, West Virginia, to honor the university's football team in the wake of the plane crash that killed them on November 14, 1970. For more information on the disaster, see Marshall University air disaster.
Click here to visit Val Bertoia's studio.
Click here to visit the Harry Bertoia Research Project.
