Knoll International • Wassily • chair • 73cm x 79cm x 69cm
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Knoll International • Wassily • chair
Please note: the chair is supplied as standard in the "core leather" finish. If you would like a different finish (canvas linen or Spinneyback belting leather), please get in touch with us.
In an interview with a Knoll historian, Marcel Breuer described how he began experimenting with bent tubular steel while he was at the Bauhaus:
"At that time I was rather idealistic. 23 years old. I made friends with a young architect and bought my first bicycle. I learned to ride it and talked to this young man, telling him that the bicycle seemed to be a perfect invention, since it had not changed in the last twenty or thirty years. It still has the original bicycle form. He said: 'Have you ever seen how they make these parts? How they bend those handlebars? You would be interested, because they bend these steel tubes like macaroni.'"
"That somehow stayed in my mind, and I began to think about steel tubes bent into frames - probably that is the material one could use for an elastic and transparent chair. Typically, I was very much concerned with the transparency of form."
"That is how the first chair was made... I realised that the bending had to continue. It had to be bent only, with no welded seams on it, so that it could also be chrome-plated in parts and then assembled. That is how the first Wassily was born. I myself had a certain amount of fear of criticism. In fact I told no one that I was carrying out these experiments. [Wassily] Kandinsky, who happened to come into my studio when the first chair was brought in, said: 'What is that?' He was very interested, and then the Bauhaus became very interested. A year later I had furnished the entire Bauhaus with this furniture."
- Frame: seamlessly formed round tubular steel, high-gloss chrome-plated. Runner frame with plastic glides.
- Upholstery: cowhide slings: thick cowhide slings in five colours.
- Core leather: strong bovine core leather in five colours.
- Belting leather: highly durable Spinneybeck core leather, available in a great many colours.
- Hide: Spinneybeck hide in five colours. Hide is a natural material; the markings are always unique. Each one will differ.
- Canvas: linen in its natural colour.
- Glides: supplied with every chair.
- Note: the "KnollStudio" logo and Marcel Breuer's signature are embossed into the chair frame.
Please note that the images shown are for illustration purposes and may differ from the actual final product.
Dimensions: height 73cm x width 79cm x depth 69cm
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