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Thonet and Bauhaus

In the years following the First World War, architecture developed a strong tendency away from its previous bourgeois ideals towards a clear, sober functionality. One of the most important roles in this context was undoubtedly played by Walter Gropius who in 1919 founded Bauhaus as a college for advancing the artistic basis of industry, trade and craft. In terms of content, the Bauhaus architects were representatives of the "New Objectivity" and largely oriented themselves on Michael Thonet's principle of reducing form and material to the essentials: something seen especially in regards of the then innovative material steel tube, a material with which was much experimented and designed, and a material which was experienced a real boom thanks to Thonet's developments of the late 1920s.

The Design Classic Thonet S 32

Bauhaus in Dessau


Thonet cantilever

Marcel Breuer was one of the first to fully explore the potential of the innovative new material, designing some classics of tubular steel seating including the cantilever chair S 32/S 32 N, which is still produced by Thonet and is one of the undisputed classics in design history. In addition to Breuer's designs there are also numerous tubular steel design classics by Mart Stam, Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the product portfolio of the furniture manufacturer from the German community of Frankenberg (Eder).

Download the brochure on the history of Thonet and the Bauhaus here:

Download the brochure on Thonet's most important tubular steel classics here:

100 Years of Bauhaus

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Bauhaus. To mark this historic event a series of celebrations are planned within the framework of the jubilee program "100 years of Bauhaus" under the motto "Re-considering the world". Together with regional and international partners the Bauhaus Association invites you to discover the lasting impact of the art school across a wide range of social and cultural contexts.

More about 'Bauhaus' in our blog

Otti Berger. Weaving for Modernist Architecture at the Temporary Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin

...Weaving for Modernist Architecture the Temporary Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, allow one to begin to approach appreciations of what both Otti Berger understood as fabric, "and further, what fabric in space is", and in doing so not only enable differentiated perspectives on Weaving and Modernist Architecture but allow Otti Berger to begin to retake her place on the helix of design, and architecture, (hi)story... Following, as best we can ascertain, the completion of her studies in Zagreb, Berger travelled in 1926 to Germany where she both sought help in Berlin and Jena for hearing damage suffered in her teenage years2, and, in January 1927, enrolled at Bauhaus Dessau...

Else Mögelin. Ich wollte, gegen alle Hindernisse, weben at the Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst, Dieselkraftwerk, Cottbus

...", enquired Paul Klee of Else Mögelin in 1921 after seeing her paintings of the village of Dornburg, home of the original Bauhaus Weimar pottery workshop, "these watercolours look as if they are designs for tapestries"... In 1919 Else Mögelin swapped Berlin for Weimar and the newly opened Staatliche Bauhaus where, following completion of the Vorkurs under Johannes Itten and Paul Klee, she spent time in the metal workshop and pottery before, thanks partly to the council of Paul Klee, but also, one suspects, on account of her biography, she arrived in 1921 at the fabled Weimar weaving workshop where she spent some two years training under Helene Borner and Georg Muche...

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for January 2024

...01 Ways to Utopia at the Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, until 29... 03 Not a Penguin Pool: Echoes of More-than-Human Entanglements at Stiftung Bauhaus, Dessau, until 11...

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2023

...Born in Berlin on April 20th 1887 Else Mögelin trained as a drawing teacher and shop window decorator in the German capital before enrolling in 1919 at Bauhaus Weimar, as one of the earliest students, and where after an initial period in the pottery at Dornburg she joined the weaving workshop in 1921...

Four "Bauhausmädels" @ the Angermuseum, Erfurt

..." So begins the German magazine Die Woche's 1930 article "Mädchen wollen etwas lernen", "Girls want to learn something", an article which opens Four "Bauhausmädels" and is subsequently extend by the Angermuseum Erfurt to explore not only what Gertrud Arndt, Margarete Heymann, Margaretha Reichardt and Marianne Brandt learned at Bauhaus, but how they subsequently applied that "something"... Or better put, the "Bauhausmädels" - Bauhaus Gals - part...


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