Our pads follow the original shape patterns of the authentic Knoll chairs designed by Harry Bertoia but there are a few differences:

1. Ours are cheaper. An average price for our seat-only side chair pad is $99. Compare to genuine Knoll pricing that starts at $170.
2. Ours arrive faster. Even though our pads are made to order and we source some of our fabrics from Denmark, we can still deliver within one to two weeks, three in the worst case. The average Knoll lead time is 8-12 weeks.
3. Our padding layer is a 1/2″ thick sheet of high density foam instead of the injection-molded product used by Knoll. In terms of comfort, it is plenty of padding, but you may notice it is slightly less stiff than a genuine Knoll pad. Think of our pads like finely tailored clothing, the fit improves with time and use.
4. We don’t use toxic adhesives. For seat-only pads, we don’t use upholstery glue. We do this to avoid the fumes during fabrication and the off-gasing of the product into your home. This gives our product a slightly looser appearance on the chair but we’ve found that after the pad has had a day or two to settle into the body of the chair, it looks just like it did back in 1952. Perfect.
   Check out our Gallery images to see close-up photos of our expertly crafted work.

Yes, each pad follows the original patterns of the authentic Knoll chair design by Harry Bertoia so fit is not a problem with original Knoll products. If you are trying to upholster a reproduction (or a “knock-off” for you purists out there…) you should be ok too, they tend to work even if the wires are spaced a bit differently than the original Knoll production models. Please note that the full cover should only be used for genuine Knoll chairs as the proliferation of bad online knockoffs with much larger chair bodies makes the fit an issue. If you have a knockoff/reproduction chair, the full pad upholstery is not guaranteed to fit. Seat pads should work either way.

Lead time: We are much faster than our competitors but all of our upholstery is still made to order and that takes about 1-2 weeks depending on when you place your order and how busy our shop is with other work. We do have ‘quick ship’ material on hand for our most popular options like black vinyl but be advised that the lead time for most orders is still 7 business days to fabricate plus shipping time via USPS which is usually another 2-3 days. Please allow up to 15 days for leather and custom orders: a custom order means we don’t have the material you selected in stock and have to order it before we can start to fabricate. Allow up to 3 weeks for full-cover upholstery orders. Note: Not all of our upholstery options are available for all chair types, if that is the case it will be noted NA. NA = Currently not available.

We do offer the child-size side chair seat-only pad but not the child-size diamond chair.

Unfortunately, our sewing machines can only handle a certain thickness of material so many thick leathers and vinyls do not work for us. Similarly, customer-supplied fabrics that are too thin or thick are also a problem as we do not use glue to adhere our fabrics to the foam pad so the result is not aesthetically acceptable. Due to these limitations, we only offer upholstery in the selections shown on our website. The only exception is for Hallingdal fabric and Izitleather vinyl. We show 15 popular Hallingdal fabrics and 10 Izitleather vinyls on our site but there are 58 Hallingdal colors and 154 Izitleather vinyl colors if you can wait for a special order. Email us your color range and we can send a “line card” of selections that are not shown on the site.

Yes, we do. We use real cowhide that we source for each order from a leather shop in Manhattan’s fashion district. We currently offer this option in brown and black leather. Visual appearance of a natural hide can vary a great deal so please request a swatch of our current leathers so you can see what you are getting prior to an order.

Sure, we’re happy to help but please check our ‘Chair Types’ page for sizes and details on each chair first. Chances are you can figure it out from here.

All ‘seat-pad only’ upholstery is sewn by hand in our New York City studio. These upholstered pads are made from a 1/2″ thick foam pad with a black canvas bottom to protect against wire-wear. Side pads have a nylon strap with velcro closures to guarantee a secure fit to the chair. Diamond pads have a front wire that secures the front lip of the pad and a velcro closure at the back to secure the chair.

This is a frequent confusion. 99% of people have the “small” diamond, sometimes called the “regular” diamond as it was the most popular version. It measures 33″ wide (from tip to tip of the “arms”). But there is another much wider version called the “large” diamond. It measures 45″ wide from tip to tip. Our hunch is that it is a similar width to the “Bird” chair, in fact, we’re pretty sure the Bird is a large diamond with a head on it but no one has ever checked so you’d have to take our word for it.

Yes but we don’t offer the full cover option for some of the complicated curved chairs like the diamond and bird chairs. For these we only offer the “seat-only” upholstery option. Please also note that not all of our upholstery options are available for all chair types, if that is the case it will be noted NA.