Pair of Marcel Breuer for Fasem 1980s Wassily B3 Tan Brown Leather Armchairs

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Pair of Marcel Breuer for Fasem 1980s Wassily B3 Tan Brown Leather Armchairs

About the Item

We are delighted to offer for sale this stunning pair of vintage 1980s Marcel Breuer for Fasem Wassily B3 tan brown leather armchairs A timeless design Classic, upholstered in tan leather hide and with a tubular chrome frame, these chairs are iconic and look amazing in any setting Dimensions Height 73cm Width 79cm Depth 69cm Please note all measurements are taken at the widest point, The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed specifically for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was on the Bauhaus faculty at the same time. Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky's personal quarters. The seat became known as "Wassily" decades later, when it was re-released by Italian manufacturer Gavina, who had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair's origins. History A champion in facts the greatest champion in fact of the modern movement and protégé of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer is equally celebrated for his achievements in architecture and furniture. Breuer was an outstanding student and subsequently a master carpenter at the Bauhaus in the early 1920s. His entire body of work, both architecture and furniture, embodies the driving Bauhaus objective to reconcile art and industry. While at the Bauhaus, Breuer revolutionized the modern interior with his tubular-steel furniture collection — inspired by bicycle construction and fabricated using the techniques of local plumbers. His first designs, including the Wassily, remain among the most identifiable icons of the modern furniture movement. The chair later known as the "Wassily" was first manufactured in the late 1920s by Thonet, the German-Austrian furniture manufacturer most known for its bent-wood chair designs, under the name Model B3. It was first available in both a folding and a non-folding version. In this early iteration, the straps were made of fabric, pulled taut on the reverse side with the use of springs. The fabric used was made from Eisengarn, a strong, shiny, waxed-cotton thread. It had been invented in the 19th century, but Margaretha Reichardt (1907-1984), a student at the Bauhaus weaving workshop, experimented and improved the quality of the thread and developed cloth and strapping material for use on Breuer's tubular-steel chairs. The Thonet produced version of the chair is most rare, and went out of production during World War II. Most of Breuer's early designs were produced under license by the Berlin-based manufacturer, Standard-Möbel, Lengyel & Company. The Wassily chair was the only significant early Breuer design not offered by Standard-Möbel, Lengyel & Co. After the War years, Gavina picked up the license for the Wassily, along with the Breuer designs previously sold by Standard-Möbel, Lengyel & Co., and introduced the more recognized Wassily version that replaced the fabric with black leather straps, though the fabric version was still made available. In 1968 Knoll bought the Gavina Group of Bologna. This brought all of Breuer's design into the Knoll catalog. This chair was revolutionary in the use of the materials (bent tubular steel and eisengarn) and methods of manufacturing. In 1925 Breuer purchased his first bicycle and he was impressed with the lightness of its tubular steel frame. This inspired him to experiment with using the material in furniture design. The design (and all subsequent steel tubing furniture) was technologically feasible only because the German steel manufacturer Mannesmann had recently perfected a process for making seamless steel tubing Previously, steel tubing had a welded seam, which would collapse when the tubing was bent. The Wassily chair, like many other designs of the modernist movement, has been mass-produced since the late 1920s, and continuously in production since the 1950s. A design Classic is still available today. Though patent designs are expired, the trademark name rights to the design are owned by Knoll of New York City. This item is available for collection from our Wimbledon warehouses Condition Please view the very detailed pictures as they form part of the description around condition Please note vintage period and original items such as leather seating will always have natural patina in the form of cracking creasing and wear, we recommend regular waxing to ensure no moisture is lost, also hand dyed leather is not recommended to sit in direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time as it will dry out and fade.

Creator:
Marcel Breuer (Designer)
Attributed to:
Fasem International (Maker)
Dimensions:
Height: 28.75 in (73 cm)Width: 31.11 in (79 cm)Depth: 27.17 in (69 cm)
Sold As:
Set of 2
Style:
Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Chrome,Leather,Hand-Crafted
Place of Origin:
Germany
Period:
1980-1989
Date of Manufacture:
1980s
Condition:
Wear consistent with age and use. Minor fading.
Seller Location:
GB
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU2823317815972

Shop All Marcel Breuer

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.