Marcel Breuer - Knoll International - Armchair - Wassily Chair

In 1962 Dino Gavina, an Italian businessman in the design sector, met Marcel Breuer in New York and convinced him to republish and realise his designs from the ‘20s. After the sale of Gavina to the American company Knoll in 1968, and the closure of the Bologna-based brand, several products from the Gavina collection were sold under the Knoll brand name. The specimen in this auction is presented in a rare version with leather in a light cognac colour. The armchair taken over from a house in Milan had never been used and had been stored inside a box for about 20 years. As a result, the chair is as good as new. It shows no signs of wear or use. The skin is immaculate and perfectly taut. Dimensions: H 72 × W 79 × D 72 cm. Design Radicale offers free transport insurance for deliveries in Europe. For shipping to the rest of the world, the cost is an estimation. We will provide a quote when the auction is finished, depending on the destination. The Wassily Chair, also known as chair model B3, was designed by Marcel Breuer. In 1925, he was the director of a woodworking shop at Bauhaus of Dessau. This chair was revolutionary in its use of materials (eisengarn and curved nickel-plated steel tubes) , as well as for its production methods. After having tested the solidity of steel tubes used on the construction of the Adler bicycle, Breuer thought of using steel tubing to build furniture. Breuer had approached Adler to produce the chair, but the company did not agree. He then turned to Mannesmann, a company that had been processing steel tubes using innovative techniques since 1885–‘86. He had the individual elements that he needed bent and built the first prototype. In the same year Le Corbusier had presented a steel tube staircase ‘built like a bicycle frame’ at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. The position of the seat and back of the B 3 attest to the influence of Gerrit Rietveld's red and blue chair (Rood-blauwe stoel) . The B 3 chair, initially produced by Standard Möbel in Berlin, became mass-produced in the 1960s, after Dino Gavina had met the Hungarian designer in New York in 1962 and convinced him to revive the tubular chair. When Gavina learned that Kandinsky had requested that the first specimen be destined for his own living room, he decided to produce it with the name Wassily. In 1968 Knoll of New York bought Gavina Spa of Bologna, including the manufacture of the chair, which is still in production.