The Bauhaus Wassily Chair

We recently spotted on a  Italian street market an old Bauhaus style chair. It was in a poor state, with the chrome rusting and the black leather looking shabby and dirty. But after it had been restored, it was looking better than we expected. There was a sticker on the chair, but this turned out to be the name of the scrap metal dealer who had salvaged the chair in Perugia, not far from where the chair was originally made by Gavina.

I had always wondered why the chair is referred to as the Wassily chair, but whilst doing our research on the authenticity of the chair discovered that it got the name after the original was commissioned for Wassily Kandinsky, the renowned artist. Designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925, the Wassily Chair is regarded as his most important and iconic design and continues to maintain a highly relevant position in modern seating.

Wassily Kandinsky in the Original Bauhaus Chair.