Serving a Double Diplomatic Mission: Strategic Alliances between Belgian and American Furniture Companies in the Postwar Era

Abstract

In the postwar era, De Coene, then one of Belgium’s largest furniture firms, and Jules Wabbes, one of the most progressive contemporary Belgian designers, each signed a contract to sell and produce products of US-based furniture companies – Knoll and Dunbar respectively. In engaging in these business deals they became directly involved in the mechanisms of US representation. At the same time both De Coene and Wabbes contributed to highly representational projects of the Belgian nation or kingdom. As such, this article argues, they served two different yet compatible and sometimes even mutually reinforcing diplomatic missions.