MARCEL BREUER B3 CHAIR
While teaching at the
Bauhaus, Breuer often rode a bicycle, a pastime that led him to what
is perhaps the single most important innovation in furniture design
in the twentieth century: the use of tubular steel. The tubular steel
of his bicycle's handlebars was strong and lightweight, and lent
itself to mass-production. Breuer reasoned that if it could be bent
into handlebars, it could be bent into furniture forms.
The model for this chair
is the traditional overstuffed club chair; yet all that remains is
its mere outline, an elegant composition traced in gleaming steel.
The canvas seat, back, and arms seem to float in space. The body of
the sitter does not touch the steel framework. Breuer spoke of the
chair as "my most extreme work . . . the least artistic, the
most logical, the least 'cozy' and the most mechanical." What he
might have added is that it was also his most influential work.
Marcel Breuer designed it in 1925, and within a year, designers
everywhere were experimenting with tubular steel, which would take
furniture into a radically new direction. The chair became known as
the "Wassily" after the painter Kandinsky, Breuer's friend
and fellow Bauhaus instructor, who praised the design when it was
first produced.
The dark brown is a newer
reproduction probably 1990’s. It's made of thick real leather. $160
