This 1970 Knoll International catalog, La Collezione di Saarinen, presents Eero Saarinen’s Pedestal Collection as both furniture and design argument. It is not a large catalog, and it does not try to sell the collection through room settings, lifestyle copy, or long product descriptions. Instead, it treats the pieces almost like sculpture: isolated chairs, tables, bases, tops, and shadows, photographed against stark white or deep black grounds. The result is less like a furniture brochure and more like a small design monograph.

The central idea is stated clearly in the catalog text. Saarinen wanted to eliminate the “supporting legs of tables and chairs,” which he saw as one of the things that made furniture difficult to place cleanly within an interior. His answer was the single pedestal base: a unified form that allowed a chair or table to rise from the floor as one continuous body rather than as a collection of separate structural parts. The catalog frames this as both a practical and aesthetic solution, noting that the pieces entered the Knoll collection in 1956 and had already become classics by the time this publication appeared.

That concern with visual order was very Saarinen. He was trained as an architect, but he approached furniture with the same larger ambition he brought to buildings: each object had to relate to the room, the building, and the broader environment. Knoll’s own history of the Pedestal Collection emphasizes this idea of “total design,” quoting Saarinen’s belief that design decisions had to move from the smallest object to the largest setting. The pedestal table and Tulip chairs were not simply new furniture forms; they were attempts to make modern interiors feel less cluttered, more coherent, and more architecturally resolved.

The catalog also reflects the optimism around new materials in the postwar period. Saarinen was interested in plastic and molded forms not as novelty, but as a way to create shapes that earlier materials made difficult or impossible. The chairs’ molded shells and the tables’ smooth bases gave the collection its futuristic, almost seamless quality. In the catalog, the white chair forms are paired with vivid red upholstery, a simple but powerful contrast that makes the pieces feel graphic and modern.

Eero Saarinen was born in Finland in 1910 and moved to the United States as a child. His father, Eliel Saarinen, was an architect and educator, and Eero grew up in the design-rich environment of Cranbrook, Michigan. He studied sculpture before architecture, and that background is easy to see in the Pedestal Collection. Saarinen was not merely solving a furniture problem; he was refining curves, proportions, and silhouettes until the object had the presence of a sculpted form.

His relationship with Knoll was especially important. Over roughly fifteen years, Saarinen designed some of Knoll’s most recognizable pieces, including the Womb chair, Tulip chairs, and Pedestal tables. Knoll notes that he was known for intense revision, using models and full-scale mock-ups to refine curves and proportions. That level of refinement matters here. The Pedestal Collection looks simple, but its simplicity is the result of a great deal of work: the base has to be strong without looking heavy, the transition from stem to top has to feel natural, and the whole object has to appear stable while seeming almost weightless.

What makes this catalog particularly interesting is how late-modern it feels. Although the collection began in the mid-1950s, the 1970 presentation gives it a different atmosphere. The photography is spare, high-contrast, and abstract. This is not the warm domestic modernism of the 1950s; it is a cooler, more international presentation of Saarinen as a design classic.

The back of the catalog reinforces that international position. Published by Knoll International in Italy, with Milan listed prominently, it includes addresses for Knoll locations and representation across Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. By 1970, Saarinen’s furniture had moved well beyond its original American postwar context. It had become part of a global modern design language: suitable for offices, homes, institutions, showrooms, and architectural interiors around the world.