Shannon Brunette
Associate Specialist
Lot 1TP
Marcel Breuer Long chair, designed 1935-1936, produced 1960s
3 October 2023, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £1,088 inc. premium
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Marcel Breuer
Long chair, designed 1935-1936, produced 1960s
Laminated beech plywood.
Frame: 79.8 x 61.2 x 142 cm
Manufactured by John Alan Designs, London, United Kingdom.
Laminated beech plywood.
Frame: 79.8 x 61.2 x 142 cm
Manufactured by John Alan Designs, London, United Kingdom.
Footnotes
Provenance
John Alan Designs, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 1964
Literature
Christopher Wilk, Marcel Breuer Furniture and Interiors, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1981, pp. 127, 145
Jack Pritchard, View from a Long Chair: the memoirs of Jack Pritchard, London, 1984, front cover, pp. 90, 113, 120, 179
Magdalena Droste, Manfred Ludewig and Bauhaus Archiv, Marcel Breuer Design, Germany, 1994, pp. 29, 132-133
James Peto and Donna Loveday, eds., Modern Britain: 1929-1939, exh. cat., Design Museum, London, 1999, pp. 90, 92
Hugh Aldersey-Williams, British Design, New York, 2010, p. 70
Christopher Wilk, Plywood A Material Story, London, 2017, front cover
The present 'Isokon' long chair designed by Marcel Breuer was produced by John Alan Designs. Jack Pritchard licensed John Alan to produce the design during the 1960s as documented in the Pritchard Papers held in the University of East Anglia Archives. These examples were made with laminated beech plywood and the seat rests on a cross support, a later modification by Breuer to add strength.