Bahaus Marcel Breuer Cesca Chair S64
About the Item
- Creator:Marcel Breuer (Designer)
- Design:
- Dimensions:Height: 32 in (81.28 cm)Width: 24.5 in (62.23 cm)Depth: 20 in (50.8 cm)Seat Height: 18 in (45.72 cm)
- Sold As:Set of 2
- Style:Bauhaus (In the Style Of)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:C. 1960’s
- Condition:Refinished. Professionally restored by our in house refinishing team. All caning original and in excellent condition. We have a total of 4 chairs, the other 2 having a 2 tone caning.
- Seller Location:Charleston, SC
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU6938237842652
Cesca Chair
Ubiquitous but never boring, the Cesca chair has defined casual elegance in the dining room since 1928. Designed by Marcel Breuer (1902–81) for the Austrian furniture maker Gebrüder Thonet, the original Cesca chair combines natural beechwood caning and modern tubular steel for a sensibility that celebrates both handicraft and industrialization. It’s a paragon of Bauhaus design, embodying the school’s “truth to materials” philosophy and adhering to the movement’s emphasis on mass production. In fact, the Cesca chair was the first-ever tubular steel frame chair with a caned seat to be mass produced — a breakthrough for furniture design.
Breuer got his start in architecture after dropping out of the painting program at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He began apprenticing with a Viennese architect and went on to join the Bauhaus movement in 1921, when he was just 19 years old, eventually becoming a master carpenter at the German arts school. While there, Breuer designed furniture for Sommerfeld House in Berlin, industrialist Adolf Sommerfeld’s private residence, which was conceived by architects Walter Gropius (the Bauhaus school’s founder) and Adolf Meyer. Not long afterward, Breuer’s experiments with tubular steel would yield his Wassily chair, named for his friend, painter and Bauhaus professor Wassily Kandinsky, as well as the Cesca.
Originally called the B32, Breuer renamed the chair in honor of his daughter, Francesca, when Italian manufacturer Gavina began producing it in the early 1960s. Knoll introduced the chair when it acquired Gavina in 1968 and continues to manufacture it today.
And while the Cesca chair’s silhouette has remained the same throughout the decades, Breuer himself later made minor modifications, including the implementation of a shallower curve to the back and the addition of a second piece of steel for the frame to account for both comfort and durability. With the Cesca’s cantilevered construction, Breuer’s design transcended that of the traditional four-legged dining chair, pushing the boundaries of what “everyday” could mean in furniture.
Marcel Breuer
The architect and designer Marcel Breuer was one the 20th century’s most influential and innovative adherents of modernism. A member of the Bauhaus faculty, Breuer — like such colleagues as the architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the artists and art theoreticians László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers — left Europe in the 1930s to champion the new design philosophy and its practice in the United States.
Born in Hungary, Breuer became a Bauhaus student in 1920 and quickly impressed Gropius, the German school’s founder, with his aptitude for furniture design. His early work was influenced by the minimalist Dutch design movement De Stijl — in particular the work of architect Gerrit Rietveld.
In 1925, while he was head of the Bauhaus furniture workshop, Breuer realized his signature innovation: the use of lightweight tubular-steel frames for chairs, tables and sofas — a technique soon adopted by Mies and others. Breuer’s attention gradually shifted from design to architecture, and, at the urging of Gropius, he joined his mentor in 1937 on the faculty of Harvard and in an architectural practice.
In the 1940s, Breuer opened his own architectural office, and there his style evolved from geometric, glass-walled structures toward a kind of hybrid architecture — seen in numerous Breuer houses in New England — that pairs bases of local fieldstone with sleek, wood-framed modernist upper floors. In his later, larger commissions, Breuer worked chiefly with reinforced concrete and stone, as seen in his best-known design, the brutalist inverted ziggurat built in New York in 1966 as the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Breuer’s most famous furniture pieces are those made of tubular steel, which include the Wassily chair — named after Wassily Kandinsky and recognizable for its leather-strap seating supports — and the caned Cesca chair.
Breuer also made several notable designs in molded plywood, including a chaise and nesting table for the British firm Isokon and a student furniture suite commissioned in 1938 for a dormitory at Bryn Mawr College. Whether in metal or wood, Breuer’s design objects are elegant and adaptable examples of classic modernist design — useful and appropriate in any environment.
Find vintage Marcel Breuer seating, storage cabinets and lighting on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Charleston, SC
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 3 days of delivery.
- A pair of Bahaus Marcel Breuer Attributed Cesca Chairs S64By Marcel BreuerLocated in Charleston, SCItalian deep brown & chrome Marcel Breuer cesca chair with arms,cane seat and back. Please take note of the honey colored seat with the deep bro...Category
Mid-20th Century Italian Bauhaus Armchairs
MaterialsChrome
- Alberto Orlandi Savonarola ChairBy Alberto OrlandiLocated in Charleston, SCAlberto Orlandi occasional chair. , Italian Renaissance-revival Savonarola chair with sculptural polished metal and solid brass decorative details. New webbing and foam has been adde...Category
Vintage 1980s Italian Renaissance Revival Armchairs
MaterialsMetal
- 1970s Milo Baughman “Thin Line” Style Chrome Arm Chairs, a PairBy Milo Baughman, Thayer CogginLocated in Charleston, SCModern Chrome & Blue Grey Fabric Thin Line Armchair Milo Baughman for Thayer Coggin. They are comprised of fantastic square chrome tube frames and are wearing their original lovely b...Category
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsChrome
- 1950s Gilt Faux Bamboo Metal Arm / Vanity Chair Hollywood RegencyBy Hickory Chair Furniture CompanyLocated in Charleston, SCA fabulous gilt faux bamboo arm/vanity chair. Would look great in a bedroom or dressing room. C. 1950’s. Produced by Hickory. Original upholstery is gold.Category
Mid-20th Century American Hollywood Regency Armchairs
MaterialsMetal
- Vintage Faux Bamboo Regency Style Mahogany Armchairs - a PairBy Hickory Chair Furniture CompanyLocated in Charleston, SCFinely crafted mahogany Regency style armchairs with scrolled crest rail ends and ring turned arm supports and legs. With H stretchers. Upholstered in a lovely fine blue and cream an...Category
Vintage 1980s American Regency Armchairs
MaterialsUpholstery, Mahogany
- Vintage postmodern Bunny Ears ChairBy Benny A. LindenLocated in Charleston, SCThis chair is so sexy that I think I could find a spot for it in any room of the house. And the fabric on the seat cushion is easy to change to fit your decor. (Because maybe pink is not your color?). This rabbit ear chair...Category
Vintage 1980s American Post-Modern Side Chairs
MaterialsUpholstery, Wood
- S64 Cesca dining chairs Marcel Breuer inspired - ItalyBy Marcel BreuerLocated in Buggenhout, Oost-VlaanderenNice set of armchairs with a a chromed-steel tubular cantilever base and a caned seat and back encased in a frame of beech. Inspired on the famous Cesca chairs from Marcel Breuer. M...Category
Mid-20th Century Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsWood
- Marcel Breuer S64 Chair by Thonet, 1982By Marcel BreuerLocated in Balen, BEIconic tubular steel chair model S 64, designed by Marcel Breuer for Thonet in 1928. The frame is made of chromed tubular steel. The seat and backrest are covered with the "Viennese ...Category
Vintage 1980s German Bauhaus Chairs
MaterialsSteel
- Pair of 'Cesca' chairs by Marcel Breuer, 1980sBy Marcel BreuerLocated in Stockholm, SEPair of 'Cesca' chairs designed by Marcel Breuer, produced during the 1980s. Rare version with rattan. Good vintage condition. Please note: set of 3 available, listed price is for ...Category
Vintage 1980s German Bauhaus Armchairs
MaterialsRattan
- Set of 6 black leather arm chairs by Marcel Breuer for Thonet model S64By Marcel BreuerLocated in Houston, TXOriginal ICONIC set of 6 chairs by Marcel Breuer for Thonet model S64. With the original tags from the Enron building circa 1986. A part of Houston history. Newly reupholstered in a ...Category
Vintage 1980s Italian Post-Modern Armchairs
MaterialsChrome
- Black Cesca Chair After Marcel Breuer Italy 1980sBy Marcel BreuerLocated in Čelinac, BACesca Chair After Marcel Breuer Italy 1980sCategory
Vintage 1980s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsMetal
- Set of 6 Thonet Cesca Chairs by Marcel BreuerBy Marcel BreuerLocated in Pasadena, TXSet of 6 Thonet Cesca chairs 1980s Set of four armchairs, model Cesca, designed by Marcel Breuer. Manufactured by Thonet circa 1981 Chrome cantilever fr...Category
Vintage 1980s North American Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsChrome