Design Within Reach

Jens, Rieslem, R-I-S-O-M, how old am I? 200. Yeah, well that's almost right. My family was in Denmark where I grew up and my father was an arc My family now, there isn't a whole lot left. My youngest son is here and I went here in 1939 and during the war I was in the army After the war I started my office in New York and with freelance designing, freelance detailing and slowly develop a business with two or three guys. Noel was a German family of furniture makers. We met a couple of times and so on and I said if you are the family of Noel from Germany then we know somet I have the designs and I have the know-how so on. We could work it out together. T And we all knew each other a little bit. Were all looking forward to t We would have a chance to talk and compare notes and all of that. It never was because we walked through it the entire day and got so tired that we said let's go home. Were all contemporary designers. Were all designers who were being used by the manufacturers for one t It gives natural and it dresses up the wood very nicely. The basic webbing is parachute webbing. We got permission to get army webbing, bleach it down and dye it again. It was a different looking chair. Nobody had done a chair Nobody had a chair Later on of course all kinds of copies came along and were done by other manufacturers. But by and large it was a new way of creating a piece of furniture. T We talked and met a few times and they said have you ever done a rocking chair? I said no, I don't know if I've ever done one. He said would you do one? He said yes. And I t Of course anytime anyt A design p Yes and no, I don't know. You develop it as you go along. A design p Where does it go? What room does it live in? And what can you use with it? My secret? I have no secrets. My secret is why do I go on doing it? Maybe that isn't such a good idea.