Marcel Breuer is considered one of the fathers of Modernism. During his career he was an architect, teacher and furniture designer. As a student and teacher at the Bauhaus School, Breuer focused on the integration of technology, materials and art.
Breuer is famous for a number of furniture designs, though perhaps no chair design is more famous than his Wassily Chair. Designed in 1925, the Wassily chair was the first bent-tubular steel-framed chair. The chair is very simple in form; yet quite comfortable and exemplary in its use of the Bauhaus design philosophy.
In the 1930's, Breuer fled from Germany to England, and eventually came to the United States where he taught with Walter Gropius at Harvard's School of Architecture.
This bookcase represents one of the most anomalous designs in Breuer's linguistic research. The tubular steel is discontinuous and touches the ground with two molded ends, cut and closed with a disk surmounting the section. Designed between 1930 and 1931, it was originally produced in Switzerland in 1930 and sold in Zurich and Basel in the modern furniture stores owned by Sigfried Gideon, Werner Moser and Rudoldf Graber. In 1933 it was included in the collection designed by Breuer for Wohnbedarf.
Materials: Five shelves in marine plywood covered in black high-pressure laminate. Frame in chrome plated tubular steel.