Wassily Chair

The Wassily chair, born as model B3, is one of the first pieces of tubular-steel furniture and a symbol of modern design. It was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925–1926, when he ran the cabinet-making workshop of the Bauhaus in Dessau.

The bicycle idea

In 1925 Breuer bought his first bicycle and was struck by the lightness of its frame in tubular steel. He decided to try the same material in furniture, bending the tubes with the techniques of local plumbers. It had only just become possible: the German steelmaker Mannesmann had perfected seamless tubing, which can be bent without collapsing. The result is an armchair made of lines: a chrome frame and thin taut straps that form the seat, back and arms. The bulk of the traditional upholstered armchair disappears, and only the structure remains.

“Iron yarn” straps

The first versions had fabric straps in Eisengarn, “iron yarn”: a strong, shiny waxed-cotton thread that Margaretha Reichardt, a student in the Bauhaus weaving workshop, improved precisely for Breuer's tubular chairs. In the late 1920s the chair was produced by Thonet as the B3, also in a folding version; that version, discontinued during the war, is now the rarest.

Why it is called Wassily

It is often believed that Breuer designed it for the painter Wassily Kandinsky, his colleague at the Bauhaus. Not so: Kandinsky admired the chair and Breuer made him a copy for his quarters. The name came decades later, after the war, when the Italian firm Gavina put it back into production, with black leather straps, and discovered the story. In 1968 Knoll bought Gavina and with it Breuer's furniture: the Wassily has been in its catalogue ever since.

Sources

• Wassily chair – Wikipedia