“Wassily” chair model B3

Designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925 for the painter Wassily Kandinsky

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel BreuerAt the time of 1925 he was director of the wood workshop at the Bauhaus in Dessau.

This chair was revolutionary in its use of materials (eisengarn, a waxed and polished cotton thread and bent nickel-plated steel tubes) and production methods. After experiencing the strength of steel tubing, used to build the Adler bicycle, Breuer thought of using steel tubing to build furniture. To build the chair, Breuer turned to Adler, but the company did not accept, so he turned to the Mannesmann company, which had been working with steel tubing using innovative techniques since 1885-86. He then had the individual elements he needed bent and built the first prototype. In the same year, Le Corbusier presented a staircase made of steel tubing “built like a bicycle frame” at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The position of the seat and backrest 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 of Berlin, became a mass product in the 1962s after Dino Gavina in 1968, after meeting the Hungarian designer in New York, convinced him to re-edit the tubular chair. When Gavina learned that Kandinsky had asked for the first example to be for the living room of his apartment, he decided to produce it with the name Wassily. In XNUMX, Knoll of New York bought Gavina Spa of Bologna, including the production of the chair, which is still on the market.