Restored Broyhill Brasilia Dining Set with Expanding Table and 8 Chairs
View Similar Items
Restored Broyhill Brasilia Dining Set with Expanding Table and 8 Chairs
About the Item
- Creator:Broyhill Brasilia (Maker),Oscar Niemeyer (Designer)
- Dimensions:Height: 37.75 in (95.89 cm)Width: 21 in (53.34 cm)Depth: 21 in (53.34 cm)Seat Height: 18 in (45.72 cm)
- Sold As:Set of 9
- Style:Mid-Century Modern (In the Style Of)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1960s
- Condition:Reupholstered. Refinished. Wear consistent with age and use. Very good restored vintage condition. All chair leg joints re-glued. New foam / fabric on chairs. Table has been refinished and only minor imperfections remain. Detailed top to bottom.
- Seller Location:Chattanooga, TN
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2255332510252
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer made modernist architecture sexy. In his signature designs, such as those for the planned capital city of Brasília, Niemeyer created a distinctively buoyant architectural vocabulary of sweeping curves, flowing lines and organic forms (attributes that also characterize his seductive furniture). As expressions of faith in the power of modern architecture and design to foster progress, Niemeyer’s buildings have a kind of heroic poetry.
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho was born to an upper-middle-class family in Rio de Janeiro. (His father was a graphic designer.) While in graduate school, Niemeyer began working for Lúcio Costa, one of the few modernist architects working in Brazil in the 1930s. Niemeyer would be assigned to the design team for a new building in Rio for the Ministry of Education and Health. The famed Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier was hired as a consultant on the project, and through him Niemeyer would absorb many lessons in bringing a sense of structural lightness to large buildings — though he would never embrace the geometric forms espoused by Le Corbusier and the members of the Bauhaus.
“I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man,” Niemeyer would write in his memoirs. “I am attracted to free-flowing sensual curves.”
Nowhere would Niemeyer demonstrate his love of curvature more expressively and elegantly than in his designs for the principal buildings for Brasília, a project begun in 1956. The dramatic Congressional Palace features two stark towers flanked by a domed structure and a bowl-shaped edifice, for the upper and lower legislative houses. He placed the Palácio da Alvorada (the presidential residence) on a small peninsula jutting into a lake, so that the sequence of parabolic columns on its facade casts a mirror image on the water. Niemeyer’s grandest achievement was the city’s cathedral, a stunning composition of 16 arched vertical supports with tinted-glass interstices.
Four years after Brasília was completed, in 1960, Brazil’s elected government was overthrown in a military coup. Niemeyer, a member of the Communist party, was harassed continually by the junta. He left the country and did not return until democracy was restored, in 1985.
While in exile, in the early 1970s, Niemeyer began collaborating on furniture designs with his daughter, Anna Maria Niemeyer. Their best known pieces are seating furniture — the Alta lounge chair and ottoman and the Rio rocking chaise, which have flowing bases made of sheets of lacquered wood or stainless steel, share the aesthetics of Niemeyer’s architecture.
The Alta’s deep, oversized seat pads nod — much like the chair designs of Niemeyer’s countryman Sergio Rodrigues — to the Brazilian penchant for long, languorous conversations. Examples of both designs are priced at about $20,000, depending on age, condition and materials. As you will see on these pages, Oscar Niemeyer’s furniture designs are sleek, sculptural, comfortable and elegant — as well as a compact emblem of the work of one of the great architects of our time.
Find vintage Oscar Niemeyer lounge chairs, tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.
Broyhill Brasilia
No other American mid-century furniture line has become as synonymous with a certain type of curvilinear decoration as Broyhill’s Brasilia group. While its revered cabinets, dressers, dining chairs and more were made in the United States, the inspiration for the distinguishing characteristics of vintage Broyhill Brasilia furniture can actually be found in Latin American architecture.
Broyhill Furniture Industries was launched in Lenoir, North Carolina by brothers Thomas H. and James Edgar “Ed” Broyhill. Ed had been working for his brother’s furniture manufacturing company, the Lenoir Furniture Corporation, which produced bedroom furnishings in the 1920s, when a nearby supplier’s factory, Bernhardt Chair Company, burned in a fire. Ed founded Lenoir Chair Company and expanded its operations while remaining an employee at Lenoir Furniture Corporation. He subsequently partnered with Thomas and together they purchased Harper Furniture Company, a local producer of Colonial Revival-style furniture, in 1929. By the 1940s, Broyhill Furniture Industries had absorbed more factories and gained footing as a strong competitor of Lenoir’s Kent-Coffey Manufacturing Company and a rebuilt Bernhardt Furniture.
In the mid-1950s, responding to changing tastes and to an appetite for what is now universally known as mid-century modern furnishings, the firm launched its Broyhill Premier line with the Sculptra series. Sculptra pieces featured a square-within-a-square motif and horizontal cat’s-eye-shaped drawer pulls. Later, in 1962, the Broyhill Brasilia furniture group debuted at the Seattle World’s Fair. The collection was heavily inspired by Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist buildings for the eponymous Brazilian capital.
Designed and built by Niemeyer between 1956 and 1960, the modernist architecture of Brasília’s state capitol buildings have since taken on iconic status. The elegant curves of Niemeyer's works — those that characterize the white concrete structures that encase Palácio do Planalto in addition to the fluid inverted arches of the Supreme Federal Court Building — can be seen in the pronounced decorative elements that adorn the Broyhill Brasilia group’s sleek walnut highboy dressers, specifically in their striking brass drawer-pull arches and carved moldings. While considerably popular during the 1960s, the production of the Brasilia line — with its beloved two-tiered bedside tables and tasteful credenzas — was discontinued in 1970.
On 1stDibs, browse mid-century Broyhill Brasilia furniture, such as walnut dressers, dining chairs, case pieces and more.
- Broyhill Brasilia Room DividerBy Broyhill Brasilia, Oscar NiemeyerLocated in Chattanooga, TNThis 2-piece Brasilia Room Divider was delicately restored to preserve the original patina. We encourage you to look close at our photos to appre...Category
Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Screens and Room Dividers
MaterialsBrass
- Vintage Witco Rustic Carved Wood Conquistador Dining Set with Red Fur ChairsBy Witco, William Westenhaver / WitcoLocated in Chattanooga, TNFabulous complete Witco Tiki dining set with four red velvet chairs and expanding dining table. This is the first time in 13 years of business that we’ve had this complete Witco dini...Category
Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Sets
MaterialsMetal
$10,496 Sale Price / set25% Off - Belgian Black Marble Dining Table & Asian Modern Black Lacquer Dining Chairs SetBy James MontLocated in Chattanooga, TNThis handsome dining table has a regal presence with it’s stately, yet sexy, black marble base. The vintage 1980s dining set has resembles work by Carlo Scarpa. The sleek dining set comes complete, as pictured with a dining table and four chairs. The set is unmarked but bears the hallmarks of Italian origins. The peninsula that brought us Ferarri and Versace has a penchant for flair. The base itself is a work of art, beautifully exhibiting the tenants of Postmodern design. It is both decorative and simple. The designer has arranged slabs of sumptuous black marble in descending size, emanating from the center. This array of slabs cumulatively form a diamond shape when viewed from the top. The geometric Silhouette of the base perfectly compliments the octagonal beveled glass top. The dramatic, high-back, chairs have a glossy lacquer finish that captures the same sheen as the stone pedestal table base...Category
Vintage 1980s American Chinoiserie Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsBelgian Black Marble
$2,996 Sale Price / set25% Off - Vintage Thomasville Embassy Chinoiserie Asian Modern Expanding Dining TableBy Century Furniture, Thomasville, Raymond K. SobotaLocated in Chattanooga, TNVintage Thomasville Embassy expanding dining table. The table is 68″ long without leaves, allowing it to host six guests even at it’s most compact ...Category
Vintage 1980s American Chinoiserie Dining Room Tables
MaterialsWood, Lacquer
- Set of Six Vintage Thomasville Embassy Asian Chinoiserie Dining ChairsBy Century Furniture, Thomasville, Raymond K. SobotaLocated in Chattanooga, TNLovingly restored, set of six vintage Nineteen-Laties Thomasville Embassy dining chairs. The Chinoiserie dining chairs have an Asian inspired silho...Category
Vintage 1980s American Chinoiserie Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsUpholstery, Wood, Lacquer
$2,896 Sale Price / set27% Off - 1970's Brown Velvet Tufted Chrome High Back Parsons Dining ChairsBy John Stuart Inc., Design Institute America, Milo BaughmanLocated in Chattanooga, TNWhat's more 70's legit than tufted brown chevron velour? These aluminum leg parsons dining chairs check all the boxes and are back in vogue with a vengeance. Perched on chrome flat-bar bases...Category
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Side Chairs
MaterialsChrome
$1,622 Sale Price / set34% Off
- Broyhill Brasilia Mid Century Walnut Expanding Dining Table with 2 LeavesBy Broyhill BrasiliaLocated in Countryside, ILBroyhill Brasilia Mid Century Walnut Expanding Dining Table with 2 Leaves This table measures: 66 wide x 40 deep x 29.75 inches high, with a chair clearance of 25.75 inches, each le...Category
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- Broyhill Brasilia Mid Century Walnut Expanding Dining Table with 3 LeavesBy Broyhill BrasiliaLocated in Countryside, ILBroyhill Brasilia Mid Century Walnut Expanding Dining Table with 3 Leaves This table measures: 66 wide x 40 deep x 30 inches high, with a chair clearance of 25.75 inches, each leaf ...Category
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- Broyhill Brasilia Walnut Dining TableBy Broyhill BrasiliaLocated in Denton, TXBroyhill Brasilia walnut extendable dining table with one leaf. A truly iconic design for any Mid century home. Length with leaf: 72 L.Category
Vintage 1960s North American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- Broyhill Brasilia Mid Century Round Walnut Drop Leaf Expanding Dining TableBy Broyhill BrasiliaLocated in Countryside, ILBroyhill Brasilia mid century round walnut drop leaf expanding dining table. Dining table measures: 60 wide x 40 deep x 29.5 inches high All pieces of furniture can be had in wha...Category
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- Broyhill Brasilia Midcentury Walnut Dining Table with 1 LeafBy Broyhill BrasiliaLocated in Countryside, ILBroyhill Brasilia midcentury walnut dining table with 1 leaf. This table measures: 66 wide x 40 deep x 29.75 high, the leaf measures 12 inches wide, making a maximum table width o...Category
Vintage 1970s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- Dining Set with Guido Faleschini Table and Giovanni Battista Bassi ChairsBy Guido Faleschini, i4 MarianiLocated in Waalwijk, NLGuido Faleschini for i4 Mariani, dining or conference table, leather, wood, metal, Italy, 1970s, with Giovanni Battista Bassi for Poltronova, set of ten armchairs model 'Elisa', velv...Category
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Sets
MaterialsMetal