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Cesca Chair Arm Chair with Upholstered Seat & Back

Designed in 1928, Marcel Breuer’s Cesca chair married traditional craftsmanship with industrial methods and materials to help make tubular steel furniture an international sensation and a modern institution. The cantilevered form exploits the possibilities unique to the material and gives the chair added flexibility and comfort. Offered in arm and armless versions with a fully upholstered seat and back, or with hand-woven cane inserts.

Details

Construction and Details
  • Available with or without arms
  • Fully upholstered seat, back and arms available in a range of KnollTextiles and Spinneybeck® leathers
  • Fully upholstered chairs feature urethane foam over molded plywood seat and back
  • Handwoven cane insets available with beech hardwood for the seat, back frames and arms
  • Beech available with natural clear finish or matte ebonized finish
  • Frame is 1” diameter chrome-plated round steel tube with a polished finish
  • Plastic glides snap into base to protect floors
  • The KnollStudio logo and signature of Marcel Breuer are stamped into the base of the chair
Sustainable Design and Environmental Certification
  • Cesca Chair with Arms Upholstered is certified Clean Air GOLD

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“At that time I was rather idealistic. 23 years old. I made friends with a young architect, and I bought my first bicycle. I learned to ride the bicycle and talked to this young fellow and told him that the bicycle seems to be a perfect production because it hasn’t changed in the last twenty, thirty years. It is still the original bicycle form. He said, ‘Did you ever see how they make those parts? How they bend those handlebars? You would be interested because they bend those steel tubes like macaroni.’ This somehow remained in my mind, and I started to think about steel tubes which are bent into frames—probably that is the material you could use for an elastic and transparent chair. Typically, I was very much engaged with the transparency of the form. That is how the first chair was made…I realized that the bending had to go further. It should only be bent with no points of welding on it so it could also be chromed in parts and put together. That is how the first Wassily was born.”

After completing the Wassily, Breuer felt that the potential grace of the material was not yet fully exploited. The Wassily design was very much influenced by the constructivist theories of the Dutch De Stjil movement. A familiar form — in this case the classic club chair — reduced to its elemental lines and planes. The result was an overlapping, dense arrangement of leather and tubing. For the Cesca chairs Breuer sought to better celebrate the new material. An attempt to reduce visual noise led him to the continuous line of steel supporting a cantilevered seat — one of the most copied concepts in 20th century furniture.
 

 

 

 

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in the Archive

Since 1938, Knoll has brought together people and ideas to create inspired objects and spaces. The Archive connects these People, their Products and the Events that shape the Knoll story. Explore the Archive in three views: Timeline, Connections and Grid.

 

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