Marcel Breuer was an apprentice at the Bauhaus in 1925 when he conceived the first tubular steel chair, the Wassily chair, based on the tubed frame of a bicycle.
Protégé of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer embodied many of the School's distinctive concepts and was and one of the School's most famous students. He returned shortly thereafter to teach carpentry from 1925 to 1928, and during this time designed his tubular-steel furniture collection: functional, simple and distinctly modern. His attention drifted towards architecture, and after practicing privately, he worked as a professor at Harvard’s School of Design under Gropius. Breuer was also honored as the first architect to be the sole artist of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Wassily chair was named after his Bauhaus roommate Wassily Kandinsky.
Born in Hungary, Breuer was educated in Vienna and at the Bauhaus, where he later directed the carpentry workshop. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1937 and collaborated with Walter Gropius in Boston and taught architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, where his students included I.M. Pei, Edward Larrabe Barnes and Philip Johnson. Among his major architectural achievements are the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
The Wassily Chair is available on 4 week Quickship with selected options:
- Limit 2
- Black Cowhide
- 1905 Red Belting Leather
Standard Leadtime for configurations not on Quickship is 8-12 Weeks.