Essential Design 
25 April 2024
Essential Design 
300

Warren Platner

Lounge chairs, pair

Knoll International
USA, 1966 / c. 1975
bronze-plated steel, upholstery 30¾ h × 36¼ w × 25 d in (78 × 92 × 63 cm)
estimate: $5,000–7,000
result: $7,095
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Decal manufacturer's label to underside of each example ‘Knoll International’.
literature: Ten by Warren Platner, Platner, ppg. 76, 164 Knoll Design, Larrabee and Vignelli, pg. 161 Knoll: A Modernist Universe, Lutz, ppg. 166-167

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A classic design is something that every time you look at it, you accept it as it is and you see no way of improving it.

Warren Platner

Warren Platner 1919–2006

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Warren Platner (1919—2006) was an American architect and interior designer whose seminal furniture collection produced by Knoll International remains an icon of 1960s modernism today. In 1941, Platner graduated with a degree in architecture from Cornell and soon went to work for the renowned Raymond Loewy and I.M. Pei between 1945—1950 later earning the Rome Prize in architecture in 1955.

While working in the office of Eero Saarinen during the mid-1960s, he released a collection of chairs, ottomans, and tables that has been in continuous production by Knoll ever since. The collection is both elegant and understated consisting of steel wire furniture that rests on a sculptural base of nickel-plated steel rods. The following year he opened his firm Warren Platner Associates later designing the highly regarded interiors of the Ford Foundation headquarters in 1967, Georg Jensen Design Center in 1968, and the glamorous Windows on the World restaurant of the World Trade Center, New York in 1976.

Auction Results Warren Platner

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Warren Platner

dining table, model #3716T and six dining chairs, model #1725A

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Warren Platner

Executive desk

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result: $21,250

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