The Wassily, also known as Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-1926. It was his bicycle that inspired him to use steel tubing to create the frame. Tubular steel was never used in furniture design before but Breuer reasoned if the steel could be bent into handlebars, it could be bent into furniture forms.  This was the beginning of a furniture revolution as within a year, designers everywhere were incorporating tubular steel into their furniture designs.

The Wassily was modelled after a traditional club chair but all that remained was the outline. Breuer called this chair his “most extreme work…the least artistic, the most logical, the least ‘cozy’ and the most mechanical.” The name “Wassily” was given after Italian manufacturer Gavina picked up the license for the chair and learned that the painter Wassily Kandinsky admired the original design and was given the chair by Breuer for his home. It was Gavina that started to produce the chair with leather straps that eventually phased out the original canvas straps.

The Wassily chair is a design classic and an excellent example of Bauhaus modernism.

An original Wassily (with canvas straps). Sold at a Christie's auction in 1999 for $93,948