B' contact sheet, edited by Florence Knoll, for a Knoll advertisement by Herbert Matter. Image from the Knoll Archive.

Florence Knoll Bassett was Knoll’s universal arbiter of taste. According to Murray Rothenberg, an early Knoll designer who worked directly for Shu, as Florence (neé Schust) was known by her co-workers, “Everything was controlled by Mrs. Knoll, everything that the public saw—letterhead, business cards, stationery, graphics—it doesn’t matter. She saw it, she approved it.” Until Robert Cadwallader’s appointment as Director of Marketing in 1967, the company’s marketing department was, essentially, a one-woman show.