Wassily Chair Marcel Breuer

Marcel Breuer designed the Wassily Chair in 1925 while teaching at the Bauhaus. The structure is the chair: a continuous bent-steel frame with leather panels suspended within it — no conventional upholstery, no padding, nothing that isn't doing a structural job. It has remained in production without meaningful alteration because no one has produced a sufficient reason to change it.

This illustration renders the chair with the clarity the piece deserves. A yellow ground — warm, deliberate, chosen for temperature rather than accuracy — occupies the upper portion of the composition. The chair sits on a pale pink floor with a distinct hard shadow. The red leather panels and black steel are simplified into flat planes; the three-dimensionality comes from the shadow alone.

The palette — yellow, red-orange, black, pale pink — is particular to this illustrator's eye, and it works: it gives the Wassily a freshness that archival photography tends to flatten. On a wall, this rewards the person who knows the chair, and introduces it well to the person who doesn't.

Archival-quality print on paper. Selected in a single format — the scale we felt best suited the composition. Supplied unframed.

• Art print on archival-quality paper
• Selected in a single format — the scale we felt best suited the composition
• Supplied unframed
• Ready for standard frames

Archival-quality print on paper. Supplied unframed.