Club Chair (B3)

Former Bauhaus student Marcel Breuer designed the first version of this chair in 1925, the year he was appointed master of the school’s cabinet-making workshop. Inspired by the curved handlebars of his bicycle, Breuer had begun to explore tubular steel as a material suited to both modern furniture design and industrial production. Radically updating the old form of the upholstered club chair, Breuer created a light and visually transparent composition of intersecting lines and planes that evokes abstract geometric sculpture. The popularity of his metal furniture led Breuer to establish his own firm, Standard Möbel, which in 1929 was purchased by Thonet, the manufacturer of this chair. The original Eisengarn (iron yarn) fabric panels are now lost and have been replaced with a modern version of the sturdy, functional material. Samples of the original fabrics produced in the Bauhaus textile workshop can be found in the museums’ collections.