Take a seat
After a search involving the internet and private detectives, Charles Pollock, creator of the iconic Sling Back Chair, is back in business with the new CP Chair. Khuroum Bukhari talks with Jerry Helling, president of Bernhardt Design, to find out how Pollock was brought back into the creative fold
Back in 1965, Pollock designed a chair for furniture and accessories firm Knoll that would become the most successful office chair of all time. Before that he worked for George Nelson's studio in the 1950s where he designed the classic Swag Leg Chair and in 1960, his first product for Knoll, what many consider a mid-century collectible, the 657 Sling Chair. He came back to attention in 1982 with the Penelope Chair, this time for Italian firm Castelli. After this, he disappeared into obscurity. No one could say what happened until Helling went looking for him.
"There were people who told me he was dead. There was no Google information other than wrong information. There was another Charles Pollock who died but he had owned a reproduction company in LA and also false information about him being Jackson Pollock's brother," says Helling.
But the mythologies circling Pollock only served to spur Helling. "When you can't have something, you want it even more." Helling went to an online search agency thinking there was a good chance Pollock would be
in New York.
A list was made of Pollocks who lived in the tristate area of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. He stripped it down by age category to a possible seven names. Detectives were hired to search court records until they came across one name they thought might be Pollock. Helling then searched public records for a list of addresses that this Pollock had lived at and began visiting each address.
"I found him at the third address." It was an apartment building on the Upper West Side for "older gentlemen" run by the New York authorities. But, there was a minor hiccup. The building's doorman declared that the man in question wouldn't answer his phone or buzzer. "He sounded like the right guy," recalls Helling.
Undeterred, he delivered a message to the building in the hope of a response. Two weeks later, Helling received a call from a gravelly voiced man. "This is Charles Pollock." After a 16-month quest, Helling was lost for words.
"I wasn't sure what to say to him after looking for him for so long."
Two weeks later they set up a meeting. Helling recalls Pollock was shocked to see him as Pollock hadn't seen a furniture industry person in a long time.
His idea was "still big guys from the Midwest in three-piece suits - very conservative." Their first conversation was surprisingly about art. To Helling's surprise, Pollock produced a painting he had completed for him in advance of their meeting. In fact, Pollock had originally studied art at the Pratt Institute in New York before being nudged by a tutor to take up design. The product designer had for the past 30 years reverted back to painting and sculpting. They spoke about the past - the greats of the design world: Eames, Nelson, Knoll.