876/​1540

Marcel Breuer (b. 1902, d. 1981)

Exceptional set of six “Isokon” stacking chairs with moulded seat and back of birch plywood, frame with walnut veneer. Designed 1936. These examples made 1937–1939 by Isokon Furniture Company, London. (6)

Provenance: Acquired late 1930s by private collector, UK.

In 1937 a restaurant and bar named “Isobar”, designed by Marcel Breuer and F.R.S. Yorke, was added to the Isokon Building. It was located on the ground floor with an outdoor terrace and its bar and dining facilities came to be a hub for the intellectual life in North London, a known hangout for both local and migrated foreign artists and progressive thinkers. It was of course furnished with Isokon plywood furniture and this present chair model is one of three different stacking chairs supposedly used in the Isobar. The use of moulded plywood for these chairs reflects the British Modernism, as well as Jack Pritchard’s idea of merging comfort with aesthetics, here bridged by plywood.

Auction

Design: Evening sale, 6 December 2017

Category
Estimate

80,000–100,000 DKK

Sold

Price realised

170,000 DKK