Hasta La Ideas

Last month we asked “Where do famous designers go when they retire?” In that post, on designer Neal Small, the answer was Maine. In today’s post on Charles Pollock, the answer is Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where he’s been living in obscurity for nearly three decades; but in a week or two, a new design from the back-in-action Pollock will resurface at the ICFF.

Charles Pollock was the industrial designer behind the Pollock Executive Chair (above) from 1963, an aluminum-rimmed classic of the sort that Roger Sterling might slowly spin around in while blowing smoke rings. Pratt grad Pollock designed the still-in-production chair for Knoll, and also worked with Charles Eames, George Nelson, and at Saarinen’s office. But in the early ’80s, after experiencing a setback on a project for Olivetti, Pollock quit the business and virtually disappeared. “[After that] many in the furniture industry assumed he was dead,” a Times article bluntly states.

That same article unspools the story of how Jerry Helling, president of furniture powerhouse Bernhardt Design, tracked Pollock down and convinced him to design a new chair. Pollock’s resultant CP Lounge Chair will debut later this month at the ICFF; the chair is so new that at press time we were not able to acquire a cleared image to post of it here, and Pollock has not yet been added to the roster of designers on Bernhardt Design’s website. Click here to see the chair and read the Times article, which features a Q&A with the newly-resurfaced Pollock.

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