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Long Chair: M.4-2022

Object information

Awaiting location update

Titles

Long Chair

Maker(s)

Designer: Breuer, Marcel Lajos
Maker: Isokon Furniture Company

Entities

Categories

Description

Reclining long chair, with laminated birch frame including arms, legs and connecting support strut, with a continuous plywood seat/back.

Legal notes

Given by the Executors of the Estate of David Scrase, 2021, in memory of Rick Mather

Place(s) associated

  • London ⪼ England

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (2022-04-29) by Executors of the Estate of David Scrase

Note

This Long Chair is an iconic design and is widely held as one of the highlights of modernist design in Britain between the wars. At that time, Breuer was one of a group of important thinkers, designers and artists who were then living in London as refugees from Nazi Germany, before moving onto North America. This group included Lázsló Moholy-Nagy and Walter Gropius, who has been appointed Controller of Design in the Isokon Furniture Company, owned by Jack Pritchard, a ‘rare modernist Entrepreneur’ (in the words of Fiona MacCarthy), who had vouched for Gropius and Breuer on their arrival in Britain. Although Breuer was better-known for his tubular steel furniture, Pritchard asked him to work on a series in plywood, a new material that allowed for greater flexibility. Long Chair, first designed in 1935, remains the most famous design by Breuer for Isokon and has almost never been out of production.

Components of the work

Seat composed of plywood
Frame composed of birch
Part

Identification numbers

Accession number: M.4-2022
Primary reference Number: 311374
Object entry form: 1490
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Monday 18 July 2022 Updated: Friday 31 March 2023 Last processed: Tuesday 13 June 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Applied Arts

Citation for print

This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:

The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Long Chair" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/311374 Accessed: 2024-11-21 19:39:56

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:

{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/311374 |title=Long Chair |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-21 19:39:56|publisher=The University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

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https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/objects/object-311374

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