ABSTRACT
In the first decade following the Second World War, Knoll International, a renowned American-based producer of “international style” furniture, entered the Western European market. It did so by selling production licenses to local furniture companies. One of these was Kunstwerkstede De Coene (De Coene Art Workshop), a Flemish family business specializing in the design and production of wooden furniture, interiors, and building elements and internationally known for its impeccable craftsmanship. In 1954 De Coene obtained the Knoll production licenses for “the Benelux countries”—that is, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg—and the Belgian Congo. 1 In the Benelux, as in other parts of Western Europe, Knoll furniture provided a welcome solution for the booming administrational sector, which was in need of suitable, modern office furnishings. However, it was not long before Knoll also entered the domestic sphere. As design historian George H. Marcus explains, the “renewed functionalist style,” as represented by, for example, Knoll, “was brought into domestic interiors as highly paid architects began to build and furnish houses for their corporate clients.” 2 In Belgium in the 1950s and 1960s, as in several other European countries, Knoll easily found its way into the homes of a culturally progressive upper-middle class. In 1965, the Flemish design and architecture critic K.-N. Elno described the situation clearly when he wrote: “It [Knoll International] equips managers’ offices … in large banks and commercial enterprises and it further finds its way into the living rooms of the upper economic stratum of Western affluent society.” 3
