In the fall of 1938, Ralph Rapson arrived at the Cranbrook Academy of Art slightly ahead of his fellow classmates to claim a particular studio as his own. Not only did it boast corner windows, it was positioned mere feet from the studio of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, president of the noted arts community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and master planner of the renowned campus. Decades later, Rapson recalled his morning visits with "Pappy," as Saarinen was familiarly known, and the hours he spent learning from and working with "one of the great delineators of all time." In Saarinen's studio Rapson "pored over stacks of beautiful pencil renderings" and gained appreciation for the architect's "sound, reasonable and livable approach to design." The experience had a lasting impact on Rapson: "I don't think I ever designed anything when I didn't wonder 'what would Saarinen do?'"

For most of his long life, which began in 1914 in Alma, Michigan, and ended in 2008 in Minneapolis with his death at age 93, Rapson did not stray far from his Midwestern roots. In 1954, he moved to Minneapolis where he established an award-winning practice, Ralph Rapson and Associates, and headed the school of architecture at the University of Minnesota until 1984. Although his prodigious design talents were well known within national architecture circles, his decision to pursue a dual-focused career in the Midwest may have cost him the greater public recognition enjoyed by such Cranbrook contemporaries as Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen.

Intriguingly, there was another aspect to Rapson's under-heralded but multidimensional career: he was a prolific designer of chairs. Beginning at Cranbrook, Rapson created hundreds of imaginative chair designs, whose shape and comfort he captured in engaging drawings rendered in his inimitable style. This lesser-known body of work is a significant part of his legacy.