The personal life of Harry Bertoia

In 1915, Harry Bertoia was born in Perdonne, Italy. At the age of 15, he followed his brother to the United States for a visit. However, Bertoia didn’t go home to Italy after his vacation and directly enrolled in Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan. Bertoia majored in art and design while in Cass and learned about handmade jewelry making. He then earned the knowledge and the experience that would serve him well in the future. Bertoia attended the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts in 1938. He then went on to the Cranbrook Academy of Arts where he rubbed elbows with luminaries such as Charles and Ray Eames, Walter Gropius, and Edmund Bacon.

Bertoia eventually opened his own shop and also dabbled in making jewelry and wedding rings, especially for friends Charles and Ray Eames and Edmund Bacon’s wife Ruth. Bertoia also worked with the Eameses in many projects. With design magnate Eero Saarinen, Bertoia helped the Eameses construct the famous molded plywood chair that propelled the Eameses to stardom. After a few years, Bertoia parted ways with the Eameses.

Bertoia then approached giant furniture distributor and furniture design star-maker Florence Knoll, and, together, they produced a Bertoia line of exquisitely modern pieces of furniture for Knoll.

The design ethics of Harry Bertoia

Bertoia was primarily a man who felt he could work best with metal. Other materials such as wood, plastic, and even vinyl were not that easy to work with. One of his famous creations was a chair made of latticed metal. Bertoia describes this chair as being made up mostly of air.

The popular works of Harry Bertoia

At the height of the 1950s, Bertoia produced a line of intricate and modern furniture pieces for Knoll. This series is aptly called the Bertoia collection for Knoll and contains pieces hewn out from his most favorite material _– metal. The Diamond Chair became a revolutionary piece of furniture. Bertoia gave homeowners the freedom and the ease of not having to haul out the extra chairs. The Diamond Chair was a type of fixture made up of welded wire mesh that despite having initial troubles of producing it, became a hit in the markets of yesterday and still echoes up to now.