The architect and designer Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) is known for two related yet distinct aspects of his career—his furniture designs of the 1920s to 1940s and his residential and commercial buildings of the 1920s to 1970s. After attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna for only a few weeks in 1920, Breuer applied to the Bauhaus in Weimer, Germany, and completed his training in 1923. After a brief stint in Paris, he returned to the Bauhaus in 1924 and was appointed a Young Master and made head of the cabinet-making department. Until 1928, he led a period of great innovation in furniture design at the Bauhaus, resulting in a series of his own, now iconic, designs.

 

In 1925 Breuer designed his first tubular-steel chair, a club chair later produced under the model number B3 and often referred to as the Wassily. He stated that the inspiration for using tubular steel came from the handlebars of his bicycle. Upon being turned down by the bicycle’s manufacturer for a supply of the material, he successfully appealed to the German firm Mannesmann, a commercial maker of tubular steel.¹ From that moment, Breuer embarked on a ten-year period of experimentation during which he became the most celebrated designer of tubular-steel furniture in the world.

 

Breuer’s open-shaped designs for tables, chairs, desks, and stools featured continuous steel lines achieved through a bending process. Functionalist in form, they were made from standardized parts that allowed for serial production. Two firms produced and distributed Breuer’s tubular-steel furniture during the era—Standard Möbel at first and then Thonet. Each firm produced catalogues, posters, and other ephemera that detailed his individual designs as well as depicted them in interior groupings.

 

Christopher Wilk, in his seminal exhibition catalogue Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiors, called the B35 Lounge Chair for Thonet one of “the more complex and successful of Breuer’s cantilevered chair designs.”² Wilk also noted that, unlike most lounge chairs that were only changed proportionally from an armchair or side chair, the B35 was very different due to its originality; it was based on a rectangular frame, featured a floating seat, and appears to be made from a continuous piece of metal.³ Indeed, the elegance of the design was an improvement upon his earlier B25 Lounge Chair (1928–29) with its blocky and rigid form.

 

Breuer’s B37 Stool was sold separately from the Lounge Chair but shared its cantilevered form. A derivation from his early side and nesting tables, Breuer’s first stools had two legs. By the time he had perfected the B37, the stools had lost their blocky form. The tubular-steel lines were fluid and seemingly unending with the stabilizing bar that ran below the seat not interrupting the line’s flow.

 

The Museum’s examples of both designs retain their original Eisengarn upholstery. Eisengarn (meaning “iron yarn”) was a waxed cotton thread originally developed in Germany during the mid-nineteenth century. Breuer, who experimented with the material at the Bauhaus, was an early proponent of its use as upholstery. Its colors ranged from blues to reds, enlivening and softening the austere designs and tonal qualities of the metal frames.

 

After leaving the Bauhaus for Berlin in 1928, Breuer immigrated to England in 1935. Through his mentor and friend Walter Gropius he began designing bent-plywood furniture for the firm Isokon in a wide range of forms. This shift in material led to a new, organic language of shapes and lines, ultimately introducing his furniture to a new and broader audience. The Isokon furniture would be Breuer’s last, as he committed his practice fully to architecture and teaching once he left England for the United States in 1937. —Cindi Strauss