In 1940, Hans Knoll founded a company in New York that soon earned a reputation for its progressive line of furniture. Florence Schust joined the firm and helped establish its interior design division, the Knoll Planning Unit. In 1947, the year after their marriage, Hans and Florence Knoll added a third division, Knoll Textiles, which brought textile production in line with a modern sensibility that used color and texture as primary design elements. In the early years, the company hired leading proponents of modern design as well as young, untried designers to create textile patterns. The...