Original Wassily Chair
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Original Wassily Chair For Sale on 1stDibs
How Much is a Original Wassily Chair?
Marcel Breuer for sale on 1stDibs
The architect and designer Marcel Breuer was one the 20th century’s most influential and innovative adherents of modernism. A member of the Bauhaus staff, 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 practise 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 realised 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 staff of Harvard and in an architectural practise.
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 recognisable for its leather-strap seating supports — and the caned Cesca chair. Breuer also made several notable designs in moulded 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.
- What is Marcel Breuer known for?1 Answer1stDibs ExpertMarch 22, 2022Marcel Breuer is known for his work as an architect and furniture designer during the 20th century. During his life, he created many famous chairs that remain popular today, including the Wassily lounge chair, the Cesca chair and the D40 cantilever chair. You’ll find a range of Marcel Breuer furniture on 1stDibs.
- 1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022One way to authenticate an original Wassily chair is to look at the stainless frame. There will be no weld in the corners, and will look like a continuous piece, with no cap on the end. Shop a collection of expertly vetted Wassily chairs from some of the world’s top sellers on 1stDibs.
- When was the Wassily chair made?1 Answer1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022The Wassily Chair, referenced as Model B3 chair, was designed at Bauhaus in 1925 by Marcel Breuer and produced by Knoll. The name Wassily was not given to the chair until decades later when it was re-released. Shop a collection of Bauhaus furniture, including Wassily Chairs, from some of the world’s top sellers on 1stDibs.