Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1No. 14 chairNo. 14 chairMichael Thonet, 1859. Made by Thonet as the 214 The Viennese café chair is where the modern mass-produced chair begins. Thonet softened beech by steaming it for hours and bent it into curves, so the original needed only six pieces of wood, ten screws and two nuts. It was also designed to ship in…0
  2. 2Red and Blue ChairRed and Blue ChairGerrit Rietveld, about 1918. Made by Cassina A chair built like a diagram: flat boards for seat and back, held in an open frame of square rails. It turned the De Stijl idea of primary colors and pure planes into something you could sit on. The colors came later. The earliest known example was…0
  3. 3Wassily chairWassily chairMarcel Breuer, 1925. Made by Knoll Breuer was still at the Bauhaus when he stripped the overstuffed club chair down to a skeleton of bent tubular steel with taut leather or canvas slung across it for seat, back and arms. The idea came from bicycle frames, whose steel he heard was bent like…0
  4. 4Cesca chairCesca chairMarcel Breuer, 1928. Made by Knoll The cantilevered side chair with a caned seat and back on one continuous loop of chromed tube is one of the most familiar dining chairs there is. Breuer designed it as the B32 shortly after leaving the Bauhaus. Its history is tangled. Legal credit for the…0
  5. 5LC4 Chaise LongueLC4 Chaise LongueLe Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, 1928. Made by Cassina The chaise longue reduced to a single chromed curve: a padded steel cradle resting on a separate black base, held by friction on rubber-covered crossbars so it stays put at whatever angle you tilt it. It was presented at…0
  6. 6Barcelona chairBarcelona chairLudwig Mies van der Rohe, with Lilly Reich, 1929. Made by Knoll Made for the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona, it became the default seat for formal lobbies for decades after. The steel frame forms an X on each side, with leather cushions buttoned in a grid laid…0
  7. 7Paimio Chair (Armchair 41)Paimio Chair (Armchair 41)Alvar Aalto, 1932. Made by Artek as Armchair 41 Aalto took the tubular steel chair's floating seat and did it in wood. A single scrolled sheet of bent plywood forms seat and back, hung between two closed loops of laminated wood. It was designed for the Paimio Sanatorium, a tuberculosis hospital…0
  8. 8Emeco 1006Emeco 1006Emeco for the U.S. Navy, 1944. Made by Emeco A chair designed for warships rather than drawing rooms, which is why it looks so plain and lasts so long. Emeco's patented 77-step construction process was invented to meet a military need for lightweight, corrosion-resistant equipment, and it starts…0
  9. 9Womb ChairWomb ChairEero Saarinen, 1948. Made by Knoll Florence Knoll asked Saarinen for a chair that was like a basket full of pillows, something she could really curl up in, and he answered with a wide molded shell on thin steel legs, upholstered all over and fitted with loose cushions. It is the chair to…0
  10. 10Wishbone chairWishbone chairHans J. Wegner, 1949. Made by Carl Hansen & Søn as the CH24 The Y-shaped back splat that gives the Wishbone its name is the giveaway, rising from the seat to a single steam-bent top rail that curves around to form the arms. It was part of Wegner's first collaboration with Carl Hansen & Søn and…0