Herman Miller: Classic Furniture and System Designs for the Working Environment.

Herman Miller: Classic Furniture and System Designs for the Working Environment

By John R Berry

Thames & Hudson, [pounds sterling]35

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Herman Miller ranks amongst the most famous and successful furniture manufacturers of the 20th century, or, indeed, any other century. Its products are classics of furniture design history and the over-riding impression given by this book is that the company has successfully placed design, and designers, at the core of its business, but that serendipity has played its part too.

Herman Miller, though, never worked at Herman Miller. He was a businessman and the father-in-law of DJ De Pree, president of the Star Manufacturing Company in Zeeland, Michigan, which made solid reproduction furniture in a variety of European styles. In 1923 De Pree persuaded Miller, a businessman, to buy the majority shareholding, and renamed the firm in his honour.

This book tries very hard to reinforce the myth that Herman Miller Inc was always an advocate of modernism, but it was cold economies that persuaded De Pree to abandon reproduction styles and adopt modernism after the Depression nearly bankrupted the company in 1931.