Chrome Flatbar Cantilever Chair, 1970s

Vintage cantilever chairs with a Bauhaus-inspired design, featuring a chromed steel frame and blue fabric upholstery. The frame elegantly curves away from itself as it meets the back...

Set of 8 MR 10 cantilever chairs (256cs) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This set is made in high quality black vegetable tanned saddle leather by Gavina in Italy c.1980s. An absolute icon of the Bauhaus Movement and influential to the entire Mid Century Modern Period. Comfortable and perfectly balanced they have become one of the most enduring designs of the 20th Century with manufacturing starting in 1927 and still continuing to this day. Originally designed as a dining chair they work equally well as side chairs or as a set of funky office meeting room or conference chair. The concept of using metal tubing as a supporting structure in chair design is credited to the British manufacturer RW Winfield who produced campaign chairs in a cantilever design for the Great Exhibition in 1851. This original design was known and documented to have been an inspiration to both Marcel Breuer and van der Rohe. Breuer was the first to produce a design in chrome pipe work and inspired by the curved handlebars of his Adler bicycle he designed the Wassily chair in 1925. Although this was not a cantilever chair it helped to establish a base production method that was built on by others. This resulted in the first true cantilever chrome chair, the S33, being designed by Mart Stam in 1926. Thereafter, van der Rohe designed the MR10 in 1927, the Brno chair in 1930 and Breuer 2 further chairs in 1928, the B32 (later named the Cesca chair after his daughter Francesca) and the B33 which was a derivative of Stam’s S33.