Herman Miller

Products from this producer offered by Prague Art & Design

The world-known furniture-making company Herman Miller was established under the name Star Furniture Company as early as in 1905 in the city of Zeeland in Michigan, United States. In the beginning, it mainly focused on manufacturing high-quality traditional furniture, especially bedroom suites. Several years later, Dirk Jan De Pree – initially an ordinary shop assistant who gradually worked himself up to the position of the company’s head – renamed the enterprise to Herman Miller Furniture Company after his stepfather who became the company’s majority owner. In 1927, the successful enterprise expanded with Herman Miller Clock Company producing traditional clock and later collaborating with the New York designer Gilbert Rohde, who initiated the switch from the traditional furniture to a modern one that better suited the new demands of the customers. Gilbert Rohde as the chief designer of the company could soon enjoy the first success with a totally new type of furniture at the exhibition “Century of Progress” in Chicago.

After Rohde’s death, his position was taken by George Nelson who created the stylized “M” as the company’s trademark and, along with it, gave a completely new redress to the company. At that time, the assortment of Herman Miller mainly focused on office furniture. The year of 1947 witnessed the beginning of a very close collaboration with designers Charles and Ray Eames’ who created furniture of shaped plywood for the company and, as the first ones in the world, produced a chair of shaped fiberglass. A turning point in the field of office furniture became the system designed by Robert Propst and entitled “Action Office” – the first open-office system composed of individual panels which the company introduced in 1968. In the following years, the Herman Miller company expanded on a global scale and received numerous awards.