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George Nelson
“You don't think your way to creative work. You work your way to creative thinking.”
To many, George Nelson is known as the designer of the Coconut Chair, Marshmallow Sofa, and Ball Clock, yet those iconic pieces represent only a small fraction of the prodigious output of someone who shaped the American design scene following World War II. Over the course of forty years, George produced a body of work, both on his own and in collaboration with a talented team of associates, that includes hundreds of furniture, building, exhibition, and graphic designs, as well as nearly a dozen books and over 150 magazine articles.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1908, George studied architecture at Yale University, a choice he came to, by his own account, by pure chance. Seeking refuge in Yale’s architecture school during a rainstorm, he quickly found himself entranced by the student work on display. Entering the profession in the depths of the Great Depression, he competed for and was awarded a Rome Prize, which provided a two-year stipend to study at the American Academy in Rome, where he lived from 1932–34. During this time he conducted the interviews that would become a series of 12 portraits on significant architects of the day — from leading lights like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Gio Ponti, to lesser known figures such as Ivar Tengbom and Bent Helweg-Moeller. The articles, published in the magazine Pencil Points, established George as a unique voice that is equal parts keen insight, wry humor, and provocative pronouncement.
By 1935, George was an associate editor of the magazines Architecture Forum and Fortune, and the next year he was running his own architectural practice in New York with William Hamby. The firm closed with the United States entry into World War II, and during the war George supplemented his magazine work by teaching architecture at Columbia University.
Through his writing, Nelson came to the attention of D. J. De Pree, president of the Michigan-based furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. Designing his first collection in 1945 and appointed design director in 1947, George quickly expanded his purview and transformed the company. Confirming De Pree’s early assessment of Geoge as someone “thinking well ahead of the parade, ” he redesigned everything from Herman Miller’s product line to its graphics and marketing and advertising materials.
George developed his own designs — from furniture to architecture, and exhibitions to graphics — in his New York City studio, known variously over the years as George Nelson, George Nelson & Associates, and George Nelson and Company. The staff included significant designers in their own right such as Irving Harper, Ernest Farmer, Gordon Chadwick, George Tscherny, and Don Ervin.
He passed away in New York City in 1986.
Lights Designed by George Nelson
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