Harry Bertoia, an eminent contributor to modern design, developed his awareness of natural beauty in his native Italy, where he constructed childish models from toothpicks, prototypes for his later innovative adventures in metal.

Immigrating to Detroit at the age of 15, he attended Cass Technical High School to learn jewellery-making and his talent later earned him a teaching scholarship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he flourished among fellow creative artists. His prints and drawings sold through a New York art gallery.

In 1943, after marrying, Bertoia moved to Los Angeles to work as a furniture designer, and studied welding. A mark of growing recognition, in the 1940s his monoprints were purchased by the Guggenheim Museum in NY and were exhibited at the San Francisco Museum.

Order a remarkably well made reproduction of this famous Beroia Wire Diamond Chair.

Bertoia became an American citizen and in 1949 in Bally, Pennsylvania he developed his metal sculptures in his home-based studio and designed his famous ‘Diamond Chair’ for the Knoll company. It was a veritable ‘miracle in metal’, a framework of latticed steel over which various upholsteries could be laid, its creative use of space and form echoing nature, with which Bertoia profoundly identified himself. He even refused to as sign his works, claiming they were a product of God’s plenteous universe. By the mid 1950s, royalties allowed him to concentrate on experimenting with metallic rod sculpting, including the so-called called ‘starburst’ sculptures, and ‘sonambient ’ pieces, multi-dimensional metal rods which can resonate to produce recordable sounds.

Bertoia’s work was exhibited at the US Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair and his sculptures grace many public spaces, commissioned by major institutions such as Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. and the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Virginia. Bertoia’s life of devotion to art and nature came to an end in 1978.