Textile Design for Knoll by Angelo Testa

In 1946 when designer Florence Schust married furniture manufacturer Hans Knoll, they formed Knoll Associates Inc. in new York City. By 1974 the company established a textile department and over the years hired many well-known textile designers, like Angelo Testa and Anni Albers, to create fabrics to be used in furniture upholstery and curtains for home and office interiors. This textile called Campagna was designed by Testa and reflects his training at the New Bauhaus in Chicago (now the Illinois Institute of Technology of Design) and illustrates the modern style’s early appreciation of the abstracted line over representational images.

This textile is currently on view in the Museum’s SECU Collection Hall.

—Whitney Richardson, associate curator