Marcel Breuer

If one asks who, of the Second Generation in Europe, captured the essence of his period in furniture, the answer must be Marcel Breuer. When the Eames were at their start point, Marcel Breuer was in America. In the same way as when one sees the drawings of the Beard House1 one says, “the Eames' House starts here”, on sight of a photograph of Breuer´s aluminium lounge chair one says: “the Aluminium group starts here”; for line is in the eye of a single generation and fabrication and process are tied to what is uniquely available to that generation. The profiled aluminium parallel side rails with falt steel seat supports between, the way the yoke is fixed to the side rails in the Breuer aluminium lounge chair, tell one that somehow, through some channel, these devices, invented by Breuer for his 1933 chair, hovered in the air to achieve a further flowering in the minds of the Eames.

From “The Eames Within their Generation” 1985 (P.S.) a fragment published in Changing the Art of Inhabitation.

1.Beard House, Altadena, California, Richard Neutra, 1934.

More info: Kragstuhlmuseum / TECTA-Archiv Lauenförde