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Written by Monique Stern
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This exceptional piece of modern furniture offers a unique synthesis of good taste and luxury.
Designed by Mies Van der Rohe and his long-time partner and companion, Lilly Reich, the Barcelona Chair is mostly misattributed to Mies alone.
It is perhaps difficult to comprehend today, but this icon of modernist style was actually designed in 1929. |
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| Mies was commissioned by the German Government to design the German Pavilion at the Barcelona World Arts Fair at Montjuic in Spain. The building itself is perhaps the epitome of modernity. Shockingly modern even by today’s standards, it must have looked positively futuristic to the fair's visitors of the day. Built of glass, steel and three types of marble, its linear simplicity is characterized by great flowing expanses, utilizing unbroken planes of each material, juxtaposed with one another. |
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Lilly Reich
Courtesy of The
Furniture Collection |
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Having completed the design for the building, Mies and Lilly began work on the furniture for its interior. In an interview the year following the fair Mies said the following regarding chair design: "The chair is a very difficult object. Everyone who has ever tried to make one knows that. There are endless possibilities and many problems - the chair has to be light, it has to be strong, it has to be comfortable. It is almost easier to build a skyscraper than a chair." Mies 1930.
Mies in the doorway of the Riehl house, 1910 - Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York
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| The exhibition was an occasion of international importance, attended by the Spanish Royal family, as well as many government officials from around Europe. Mies was well aware of this significance and of the challenges that faced him when he set about designing the chair for the Pavilion, he commented at the time that this was to be, "An important chair, a very elegant chair and costly. It had to be monumental. You couldn't just use a kitchen chair." Mies 1929. |
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The Barcelona Chair
Originally designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
for the German National Pavilion
1929 Barcelona International Exhibition
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The chair he designed for the Pavilion is said to have been inspired by both the folding chairs of the Pharaohs and the X-shaped footstools of the Romans. This regal and formal lineage was quite fitting and was no doubt intentional, affording this modern design an intellectual and cultural weight that would have been all the more obvious in such a futuristic environment.
Indeed the Barcelona chairs became thrones when the Spanish Royals visited the German Pavilion and sat in them for a time. They were the only chairs in the whole building.
The originals predated stainless steel and seamless (ground) welds so the legs had to be bolted together. The leather used in those first examples was pigskin and the color of the chairs in the Pavilion was ivory. But today’s Barcelona chair is not so very different. Mies redesigned the chair in 1950, three years after the death of Lilly Reich, making use of the newly developed material, stainless steel. This allowed the frame to be formed from a single piece of metal, and so it was that the bolts of the original were replaced by the smooth lines that we know and love today.
The Barcelona chair, sometimes referred to as the Pavilion chair, quickly gained a reputation as a design worthy of kings. It went into commercial production almost immediately and has remained in production ever since.
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| Philosophically, mid-century modernists including Mies generally subscribed to the idea that modern furniture should be accessible to the masses, both financially and aesthetically. However, the Barcelona chair is an exception to this rule. The materials and construction are expensive and labor intensive; therefore too costly to make the chair widely accessible. Furthermore, its regal bearing and associations with royalty gave it an instant cache, which has grown rather than diminished with time. As a result, it has endeared itself to the rich, famous and wealthy; rather than to the masses. |
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© Werner Blaser - Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art |
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The rest of the Barcelona range was not designed by Mies, but true to his design, the designers used the same style legs, and the same type of quilted and piped leather upholstery. The high quality leather (cow rather than pig skin today) is individually hand sewn, requiring some 28 hours of highly skilled labor to produce.
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