Tulip Table - Pre-used Knoll Originals

Scott Howard is pleased to offer a selection of pre-used vintage Knoll tulip tables.

The tables shown on this page are guaranteed to be original vintage Knoll products, which have been pre-used by others and are available from our UK held stocks in a variety of models and colours.

1. Scott Howard has never been an authorised distributor of Knoll products.
2. As we currently hold stocks of genuine vintage Knoll tables at our UK warehouse, we are happy to offer these pre-used products for sale.
3. The trade marks Florence Knoll, Mies van der Rohe, Bertoia, Tulip, Eerio Saarinen and Wassily are all registered trade marks belonging to Knoll International Inc.

Eero Saarinen (1910-1961)

Eero Saarinen was born in Kirkkonummi, Finland in 1910. He studied in Paris and at Yale University, after which he joined his father's practice. Eero initially pursued sculpture as his art of choice - and his later architectural and furniture designs reflect this beautifully. The design of the pedestal group of tables and chairs later became colloquially known as tulip tables and chairs. They are undeniably elegant, yet are still generic of many tables in production both at the time and today. After a year in art school, he decided to become an architect instead. Saarinen evolved a remarkable pallet of materials and forms, innovative use of materials and uniquely sculptural shapes - but always with a pragmatic focus upon function.

His style has been described as International and Expressionist - and indeed it is both: utilizing a vocabulary of forms that was undoubtedly influenced by the work of designers in many countries and cultures, he produced work that pushes the boundaries of our expectations and preconceptions.

Scott Howard office furniture supplies iconic designs from 1929 to the present day.

Historical records show that in 1955, Eero Saarinen launched a range of tables and chairs which he called his PEDESTAL GROUP furniture. In recent times, these have colloquially become known as tulip tables and chairs.

However a raft of similar products have also been called “Tulip”, either in their descriptions or their names.

Definitions such as tulip table, tulip chair, tulip base, tulip lamps etc. have become synonymous with a certain style of furniture. Even now today, here at Scott Howard, we have a number of reputable competing manufacturers still using the name tulip to describe their products.

However on the 30th of October 2012, in a stroke of pure genius, Knoll International Inc. trade marked the word “Tulip” in class 20 (furniture, seating, chairs, tables etc) under the registration number EU011306487. This now means that the word tulip is officially their intellectual property and as a result is protected solely for their use.

So after nearly 60 years of the world’s office furniture industry using the term tulip to describe a style of base, we now have to come up with something different. I can only admire the genius involved (even though I don’t like it) but it is now the law - so here at Scott Howard our pedestal based tables will now be known as Trumpet tables. We liked the name “Fluted” but someone in America trademarked that too, so Trumpet it is!

I have to admit that after nearly 40 years of personally using the word tulip to define any piece of furniture with a pedestal base, I am finding it very hard to start using other words to define these styles of bases and I started thinking about the hundreds of products this registration now affects and here are just some of the many items affected – all the products shown below have used the term tulip in their descriptions.

Now that Knoll have trademarked the word tulip, it is only in a historical context that we can use the word tulip to refer to products from the past.

I STRESS THAT WE DO NOT SELL ANY OF THESE ITEMS -THEY ARE SHOWN HERE FOR GENERAL INTEREST ONLY.