Harry Bertoia was an Italian-born American sculptor and modernist designer whose work moved across jewelry, furniture, and sound, a Cranbrook-trained metalworker who designed the Diamond Chair for Knoll, contributed to the Eames furniture line, and produced the Sonambient sound sculptures that defined the last two decades of his career.
Harry Bertoia (March 10, 1915 – November 6, 1978) was an Italian-born American sculptor, jewelry designer, and modernist furniture designer. Born in San Lorenzo d'Arzene in northern Italy, he immigrated with his family to Canada and then to Detroit in 1930, took early drawing classes in Italy, and won a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1937. There he encountered Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Walter Gropius, Charles and Ray Eames, and Florence Knoll, and in 1939 was asked by Eliel Saarinen to reopen the school's metal workshop. He taught jewelry design and metalwork at Cranbrook, where his early reputation was built.
He moved to California in 1943 to work with Charles and Ray Eames, helping to develop the wood-laminating techniques that produced the Eames Lounge Chair, and in 1950 was invited by Hans and Florence Knoll to a small studio in Bally, Pennsylvania, where he designed the welded-steel-wire furniture line that included the iconic Diamond Chair. Royalties from the Knoll collection allowed him by the mid-1950s to commit himself to sculpture full time. From 1959 onward he developed the Sonambient sound sculptures, vertical reeds, rods, and gongs in metal that resonate, hum, and chime when activated by wind or human touch, which became the defining work of his career. His sculptures, jewelry, and furniture are held in the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, SFMOMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Cranbrook Art Museum, among others.