Expanding opportunities beyond the classroom, the Godfrey and Roberta Kunzendorf Lecture on Furniture Design series was created to encourage and support the study of furniture design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Godfrey Gerhard Herman Kunzendorf, known to Lincolnites as Zeke Kunzendorf, was born in Hooper, Nebraska. Mabel Roberta Kunzendorf, born Mabel Roberta Valentiner and known to Lincolnites as Bert, was born and raised in Lincoln’s College View neighborhood. After he graduated from Lincoln High and enrolled in the University of Nebraska’s College of Business, and after she graduated from College View High School, they worked and met at Gold’s Department Store in Lincoln. She was a sales associate in women’s apparel and a model in fashion shows at Gold’s, until they married in 1949, and he was the furniture buyer for Gold’s, until it was sold in 1965.
His continuing success as a furniture buyer in Washington, DC—and her enduring interest in the aesthetics, the quality and the coordination of fabrics—led them in 1969 to build the Centra House of Furniture, their co-owned and conjointly operated furniture store in central Florida.
In honor of Godfrey and Roberta Kunzendorf’s lifelong interest in furniture’s form and function, in recognition of their Nebraska roots and their lifelong loyalty to the Cornhuskers, and in loving memory of both of them, this lecture series has been created to explore the innovations and trajectories of furniture design in the built environment.