Wassily Chair
Encyclopedia
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
ed by Marcel Breuer
Marcel Breuer
Marcel Lajos Breuer , was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.- Life and work :Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at...
in 1925-1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed for the non-objective painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, who was concurrently on the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
faculty. However, Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky's personal quarters. The chair became known as "Wassily" decades later, when it was re-released by an Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
manufacturer named Gavina who had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair's origins.
The chair later known as the "Wassily" was first manufactured in the late 1920s by Thonet
Gebrüder Thonet
Gebrüder Thonet is a European furniture manufacturer based in the German town of Frankenberg, Hesse. It was founded by Michael Thonet. It merged with Mundus in 1922....
, 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 versions. In this early iteration, the straps were made of fabric, pulled taut on the reverse side with the use of springs. Black and white fabric were available, as well as a popular wire-mesh fabric version. 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 (company)
Knoll (company)
Knoll is a design firm that produces office systems, seating, files and storage, tables and desks, textiles , and accessories for office and for the home. The company also manufactures furniture for the home by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll , Frank Gehry, Maya Lin and...
bought the Gavina Group of Bologna. This brought all of Breuer's design into the Knoll catalog.
This chair
Chair
A chair is a stable, raised surface used to sit on, commonly for use by one person. Chairs are most often supported by four legs and have a back; however, a chair can have three legs or could have a different shape depending on the criteria of the chair specifications. A chair without a back or...
was revolutionary in the use of the materials (bent tubular steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
and canvas
Canvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...
) and methods of manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
. It is said that the handlebar of Breuer's 'Adler'
Adlerwerke vorm. Heinrich Kleyer
Adler or Adlerwerke vormals Heinrich Kleyer was a German aircraft manufacturer established by Heinrich Kleyer in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1934 by buying out Gerner...
bicycle
Bicycle
A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....
inspired him to use steel tubing to build the chair, and it proved to be an appropriate material
Material
Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...
because it was available in quantity. The design (and all subsequent steel tubing furniture) was technologically feasible only because the German steel manufacturer Mannesmann
Mannesmann
Mannesmann AG was a German corporation with headquarters in Düsseldorf. The company was founded in 1890 originally to produce seamless steel tubes. It was traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The company had 130,860 employees worldwide and revenues of €23.27 billion.Over time, 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 design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
s 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
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
designs are expired, the trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
name rights to the design are owned by Knoll
Knoll (company)
Knoll is a design firm that produces office systems, seating, files and storage, tables and desks, textiles , and accessories for office and for the home. The company also manufactures furniture for the home by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll , Frank Gehry, Maya Lin and...
of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Reproductions are produced around the world by other manufacturers, who market the product under different names.