Jens Risom

Jens Risom was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 8 May 1916. One of the first designers to bring the traditional Scandinavian values of function and craftsmanship to the United States, Jens Risom was part of a new vanguard that helped establish post-war America's leadership role in the world of modern furniture design and manufacturing. Risom was trained as a designer at the Copenhagen School of Industrial Arts and Design, where he studied under Ole Wanscher and Kaare Klint. He was classmates with Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen. Risom and Knoll made a balanced team when they met in the US, knoll knew sales and Risom knows design, their first task was to tour the country to survey the landscape, visit with architects and generally assess the potential market for a line of modern furniture. Among his enduring pieces from that era is the Risom Lounge Chair, a permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1943, Risom left Knoll to join the U.S. Army. He returned to the United States in 1946 to launch his own design firm Jens Risom Design, which he ran until the early 1970s. Risom died at his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, at the age of 100.