Marcel Breuer for Gavina Wassily B3 Brown Leather Armchair, Italy 1960
View Similar Items
Marcel Breuer for Gavina Wassily B3 Brown Leather Armchair, Italy 1960
About the Item
- Creator:Marcel Breuer (Designer),Gavina (Maker)
- Design:
- Dimensions:Height: 28.75 in (73 cm)Width: 27.17 in (69 cm)Depth: 31.11 in (79 cm)
- Style:Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1960
- Condition:
- Seller Location:Naples, IT
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU3221327949512
Wassily Lounge Chair
Inspired by bicycle handlebars, the Wassily chair is one of Marcel Breuer’s (1902–81) greatest achievements. Even though the tubular metal chair looked like an artifact from the future when the Hungarian-American designer and architect conceived it in 1925, Breuer could not have foreseen the significant impact that this would have on modern design.
From 1920–28, Breuer studied and then taught at the Bauhaus school of design, where he found a kindred spirit in Walter Gropius, who invited Breuer back as junior master of the carpentry workshop. After less than a year in his new role, Breuer produced his revolutionary chair, which is among the first furniture designs to feature bent tubular steel.
Breuer called the Wassily his “most extreme work” because the pared-down design didn’t look comfortable. It’s true: Take an everyday club chair — the Wassily’s technical name was the model B3 club chair — and toss the cushions and you’d have something like Breuer’s design. The lightweight and mass-produced tubular-steel handlebars of the maker’s bicycle made him wonder if he could achieve something similar with bent-steel furniture.
The resulting mid-1920s-era chair, the seat of which was made of a durable canvas developed by Bauhaus student Margaretha Reichardt, was named the Wassily after painter and fellow Bauhaus colleague Vasily “Wassily” Kandinsky expressed admiration for the piece. Today, Knoll manufactures the Wassily chair.
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.
- Marcel Breuer for Gavina Set of 6 "Cesca" Chairs, Italy 1960sBy Gavina, Marcel BreuerLocated in Naples, ITSet of 6 Cesca chairs designed by Marcel Breuer, produced by Gavina in 1960. The chairs show slight signs of wear, the seats are original Vienna straw. The combination of Vienna stra...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsMetal
- Marcel Breuer for Gavina Set of Four Cesca Chairs, Italy 1970sBy Gavina, Marcel BreuerLocated in Naples, ITGroup of four chairs Mod. Cesca by Marcel Lajos Breuer for Gavina - Italy - with original label. Walnut backrest, chromed steel tubular frame and Vienna straw. Breuer's Cesca chair h...Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
MaterialsChrome
- Marcel Breuer Pair of Cesca Chairs, Italy, 1970sBy Marcel BreuerLocated in Naples, ITCesca chair designed by Marcel Breuer. Marcel Breuer conceived the first tubular steel chair in 1925, based on the tubular frame of a bicycle. His revolutionary Cesca chair, named af...Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
MaterialsChrome
$1,195 / set - Bamboo and Rattan Armchair, Italy, 1960sLocated in Naples, ITItalian-made armchair produced in the 1960s. Bent bamboo and woven rattan frame. Good overall condition, some marks due to normal use over time.Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsBamboo, Rattan
- Pair of Rattan Italian Armchairs, 1960sLocated in Naples, ITRattan armchairs with curved armrests. Good conditions.Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsBamboo, Rattan
- Tito Agnoli Attributed Rattan Armchair, Italy, 1960sBy Tito AgnoliLocated in Naples, ITElegant rattan armchair from the 1960s attributed to Tito Agnoli. Tito Agnoli was born in Lima to an Italian family; first an architect then a designer, he has collaborated with nume...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsBamboo, Rattan
- Italian Modern White Armchair Wassily B3 by Marcel Breuer for Gavina, 1960sBy Gavina, Marcel BreuerLocated in MIlano, ITItalian modern White Armchair Wassily B3 by Marcel Breuer for Gavina, 1960s Iconic Armchair mod. Wassily, also known as the mod. B3, with a rectangular seat in white leather. The st...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsSteel
- Italian Mid-Century Wassily B3 Brown Leather Armchair by Breuer for Gavina, 1960By Gavina, Marcel BreuerLocated in MIlano, ITItalian mid-century Wassily B3 brown leather armchair by Breuer for Gavina, 1960s Wassily lounge chair also known as Model B 3, with rectangular seat in da...Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
MaterialsSteel
- Marcel Breuer 'Wassily' Armchair for Gavina 1970sBy Gavina, Marcel BreuerLocated in Milano, ITIconic armchair designed in 1925 by Marcel Breuer for the painterWassily Kandinsky. Made of chrome-plated tubular steel and leather, it bears the production sticker. Production 1960s.Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
MaterialsMetal
- B3 Wassily Armchair by Marcel Breuer Edition Gavina, Italy, 1960By Marcel BreuerLocated in PARIS, FRThis iconic model was made by Marcel Breuer in 1925 during the period of time when he was The director of the Bauhaus carpentry workshop in Dessau in Germany. For his creation, he w...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Bauhaus Armchairs
MaterialsSteel
- Italian modern brown leather Wassily armchair by Marcel Breuer for Gavina, 1970sBy Marcel Breuer, GavinaLocated in MIlano, ITIconic Italian modern brown leather Wassily armchair by Marcel Breuer for Gavina, 1970s Wassily or B3 model armchair, with chromed tubular steel structure. The seat, armrests and bac...Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Modern Armchairs
MaterialsSteel
- Wassily armchair by Marcel Breuer Gavina edition Italy 1960sBy Marcel Breuer, GavinaLocated in PARIS, FRThis iconic model was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925, during his period as director of the Bauhaus carpentry workshop in Dessau, Germany. He drew his inspiration from his Adler bi...Category
Vintage 1960s European Bauhaus Armchairs
MaterialsSteel