A 1960 B3 Armchair by Marcel Breuer

A 1960 B3 armchair produced by Gavina, designed by Marcel Lajos Breuer (21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981).

Eight part 70cm tubular steel frame, yarn straps, signs of use to the straps and minor losses of chrome plating to the frame.

This example was bought new in 1960 and remained with the original owner till found earlier this year, having viewed the oldest known example (shown in the last picture) in the Bauhaus Museum, Dessau, this example is the closest to the original I have seen.

From 1920 to 1928 Breuer studied and then taught at the Bauhaus School of Design, where he created the pioneering B3 'Wassily Chair', whose design perfectly synthesised form, function and material. 

H: 29" W: 31" D: 26.5" 

H: 74 W: 79 D: 67 CM

Seat Height: 15" / 38 CM.

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925–1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed specifically for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was on the Bauhaus faculty at the same time. 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 reissued by Italian manufacturer Gavina, which had discovered the anecdotal Kandinsky connection during its research on the chair's origins.