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Modern Furniture – Timeless Classics

Modern Furniture: Timeless classics

Prior to the modernist design movement, functionality to the back seat appeal to the popular ornamental furniture style. The modern movement reintroduced simple efficiency and originality to the home furnishings marketplace, and innovation to home decor.  Modernist design schools like Bauhaus and Werkbund revolutionized home furniture. By investing in the creativity of their artists along with modernist philosophies, the introduction of advanced manufacturing methods and new materials for home furnishings design emerged. Many of the original modern furniture designs are still popular today, like the Eames Chair, the Barcelona Chair, the Wassily Chair and many others.  This article presents the classic modern furniture pieces that are still popular today.

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-26 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was concurrently on the Bauhaus faculty. However, Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky’s personal quarters. The chair became known as “Wassily” decades later, when it was re-released by an Italian manufacturer named Gavina who had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair’s origins.

This chair was revolutionary in the use of the materials (bent tubular steel and canvas) and methods of manufacturing. It is said that the handlebar of Breuer’s ‘Adler’ bicycle inspired him to use steel tubing to build the chair.

The Wassily chair, like many other designs of the modernist movement, has been mass-produced since the late 1920s, and continuously in production since the 1950s

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The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, correctly titled Eames Lounge and Ottoman, were released in 1956 after years of development by designers Charles and Ray Eames for the Herman Miller furniture company. It was the first chair the Eames designed for a high-end market. These furnishings are made of molded plywood and leather. Examples of these furnishings are part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum Of Modern Art.

The chair is composed of three curved plywood shells. In modern production the shells are made up of seven thin layers of wood veneer glued together and shaped under heat and pressure. This differentiates the newer chairs from the “original” (vintage) chairs which used Brazilian rosewood veneers and were constructed of five layers of plywood. Also differentiating the very earliest sets from newer sets were rubber spacers between the aluminum spines and the wood panels first used in the earliest production models and then hard plastic washers used in later versions. In the earlier sets, the zipper around the cushions may have been brown or black as well, and in newer sets the zippers are black. The shells and the seat cushions are essentially the same shape: composed of two curved forms interlocking to form a solid mass. The chair back and headrest are identical in proportion, as are the seat and the Ottoman.

Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Chair
Perhaps the most famous of all modern chairs, the Barcelona Chair by Mies van der Rohe is a ubiquitous and unmistakable classic of modern design.

German-born American Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created the Barcelona Chair for the German Pavilion in 1929 for the Barcelona Exposition. While some have tried to mimick the sleek silhouette and structure of the Barcelona Chair, Mies van der Rohe gave the exclusive manufacturing rights for his design to Knoll in 1953.

The Barcelona Chair and matching ottoman feature carefully hand-tufted leather with hand-buffed frame and carefully welted Spinneybeck volo cowhide panels. The Barcelona Chair is meticulously hand-crafted from start to finish and is truly a modern masterpiece. The Barcelona Lounge Collection was honored with The Museum of Modern Art Award in 1977.

Mies van der Rohe’s revolutionary 1929 design is still relevant today, fitting seamlessly with almost any decor. The Barcelona chair and ottoman set is a modern must-have. Today Knoll manufactures the frame in two different steel configurations, chrome and stainless. The chair is almost completely hand-laboured. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s signature is stamped into each chair.

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Want to learn more about the modern design movement?

Check out these great books and magazines about modern furniture & design:

A History of Modern Design: Graphics and Products Since the Industrial Revolution by: David Raizman
This book is a beautifully illustrated documentation of the history of the modern design movement and includes everything from modern furniture to modern fashion and advertising.

Twentieth-Century Design (Oxford History of Art) by: Jonathan M. Woodham
This is a very thorough and well-presented history of modern furniture design by Oxford History of Art – an essential for any modern design library.

The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design by: Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks, C. Ford Peatross
The Eames Lounge Chair is a classic and this book commemorates its 50th anniversary with appropriate style and attention to detail.

Sourcebook of Modern Furniture, Third Edition by: Jerryll Habegger, Joseph H. Osman
A great resource and review of modern designers and architects.

Dwell
Dwell is the greatest magazine for staying up-to-date on modern design and architecture trends.

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