Design Deconstructed: The Bertoia Molded Shell Side Chair

Over half a century has passed since Harry Bertoia designed his colorful and distinct iteration of his wire-form side chair that uses a seat made from a mix of plastic and fiberglass. The unique seat blended bright colors and flexibility without compromising the graceful curves Bertoia often employed. Today, Knoll is re-introducing Bertoia's old design as the Bertoia Molded Shell Side Chair. With a new seat made from glass reinforced nylon and an updated colorway, this reinvigorated classic offers an iconic chair with a playful tone. In honor of the re-introduction, we look back at how the Side Chair came about and at what influenced Bertoia to consider adding a coloful splash.

Tip toeing the line between sculpture and impressive pieces of furniture, Harry Bertoia’s iconic wire-form collection of chairs introduced the world to an entirely new way of looking at hard materials like steel and iron. Heavily influenced by his studies of space, form, steel wire and rod, Bertoia sought to derive a degree of functionality from his work – one that ultimately manifested itself in a series of chairs.

Already a member of the Cranbrook Academy of Art by the 1940’s as a metalsmith instructor, Bertoia experimented with painting, small-scale sculpture, and sketching. As he developed his artistic practice, Bertoia ultimately relied on steel wire and rod because they were both flexible and lightweight, allowing him to create three-dimensional versions of his ideas rather than just sketches and paintings.

Ten years after Cranbrook in 1950, Hans and Florence Knoll invited Bertoia to Knoll, asking him to apply his skillset to furniture. He received a small workspace in the original East Greenvile factory that he recalled being completely empty, far from meeting the standards of a metal shop. Regardless, Bertoia’s first instinct when thinking about furniture design was steeped in steel rod and wire. He prioritized comfort above all, imagining that comfort derived from metal would truly change the way people considered the hard material. “I wanted the chairs to fit as comfortably as a good coat. For flexibility in the basket construction, I used steel for strength and unified the design with nickel-chrome plating for beauty, giving the chair durability and lightness in appearance.” To defy metal’s natural hardness was not a foreign concept to the avid metalsmith.

Bertoia’s ample collection of sculptures often explored ideas of kinematics, balance, and gravity’s natural “push” on the things around us. Works like Wire Construction 8 and Sounding Pieces constantly flexed and swayed either in the wind when outdoors or under their own weight. His poised sculptures of brass weld-coated steel wires illustrate an early interest in the intersection between the Nature’s organic and curvilinear shapes and steel’s rigidity.

Starting in 1952, such themes of Nature, gravity, and the kinematic limits of metal, began to take form into what ultimately became icons of mid-century modern design. Always thinking about comfort, Bertoia played with positioning, “considering the possibility of shapes, then relating what the wire could be, what shape it could take.” In profile, Bertoia’s side chair looks as if the steel wires were bent to match the contours of the human body, letting gravity smooth out any irregularities and rendering the graceful swooping seat curve.

The result was just as much of a sculpture as it was an early prototype for future iterations of wire-form chairs. Dick Schultz, who worked with Bertoia on the development of the collection, upon seeing the first rendering of a Side Chair, noted that the piece looked, “like something that grew out of nature.” As Bertoia approached the final design for his side chair, he began playing with size, alternate functions, and material. He translated the various sitting positions we enjoy over the course of a day into different sculptural pieces – the Bird Chair for lounging and resting your head, the Diamond Chair for a living room setting with oversized arm rest, and the Chaise for a fully reclined experience – all the while maintaining the sublime grace Bertoia bent into the steel.

The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living. The assumption is that somewhere, hidden, is a better way of doing things.”

—Harry Bertoia

Bertoia designed many iterations of the more popular, everyday Side Chair. He experimented with upholstery, covering the entire chair in a range of colorful fabrics, various kinds of seat pads, and a leather seat and back. However, arguably the most distinct iteration, based on the fact that he partially moved away from wire-form, was a side chair with a fiberglass and plastic molded seat.

Given Bertoia’s interest in the kinematic limits of different materials, we can understand molded shell as an experimentation with a softer, more forgiving material. The molded shell Side Chair retained a steel wire base, which only emphasized Bertoia’s attentiveness to the points of intersection between the hard and soft, the light and heavy, and the straight and curved. Furthermore, a plastic molded shell allowed Bertoia to play with colors without having to add a seat pad or a large swatch of fabric. To an extent, Bertoia’s experimentation with a different material, a colorful one at that, is a nod to his varying fields of expertise.

good design's essential response is toward nature...to natural forms and tendencies that their designer perceives, reacts to, even stumbles on in his investigation of an idea”

—Harry Bertoia

It’s as if Bertoia merged his love for painting with his love for sculpture. When asked if his painting ever influenced his furniture design, Bertoia responded, “I used to make paintings on the most transparent paper I could find – paint just a shape here, leave a lot of space around it, and then another shape and another color there. Then I would stretch the paper on a frame and hang it up against the light. The colors would float in the air, some closer, some father back. I started to get interested in all these space experiments long ago – at Cranbrook after I had been there a little while – and the floating-in-space ides is now in the chairs too.” A wire-form base gave way to a brightly colored, naturally flexing, organically shaped seat.

Bertoia’s experimentation lived on the US market from 1960 to 1972. After decades of Bertoia’s success, Knoll is re-introducing the colorful Side Chair as the Bertoia Molded Shell Side Chair – this time with an even softer and more flexible seat. Rather than fiberglass, the new seat is 100% glass reinforced nylon which renders a more opaque and silky finish. Merging the sublime grace of his wire-form Side Chair with a touch of color and natural flex, the Bertoia Molded Shell Side Chair is a reinvigorated classic, ready to add colorful accents to any room. Mix and match the chairs or keep a singular color palette, the Molded Shell Side Chair offers a classic design with a playful tone.