Marcel Lajkó Breuer (1902-81) for P.E. Gane & Co. Ltd., Bristol, prototype cantilevered armchair, designed and made 1935, carved and jointed limed wood with sprung seat and back, woollen twill upholstered seat and back cushions, ivorine labels to underside ‘P E GANE LTD House Furnishers, College Green, BRISTOL’ and ‘PARKER KNOLL/ Patent 322626’, 65cm wide, 75cm deep, 81cm high

Commissioned by Crofton Gane for his house in Downs Park West, Bristol. One chair illustrated in situ in articles in The Architectural Review, vol 13 no 79, March 1936 and Design for To-Day, vol 3, December 1935. Variously described as the Living Room, Drawing Room or (by Breuer) Lounge. Architectural Press Archive/RIBA Library Photographs Collection.

Exhibited: “Ken Stradling: Modern Design in Britain”, Margaret Howell, Wigmore Street, London, October - November 2015

This armchair formed part of a group of furnishings constituting some of the most interesting modernist furniture produced in Britain during the 1930s.

It was designed by the Bauhaus designer and teacher Marcel Breuer (1902-81) for the Bristol home of furniture manufacturer and retailer Crofton Gane and made by his company P E Gane. An active member of the Design in Industry Association, which was championing the emergent modern movement in design, from 1927 Crofton had begun transforming the family firm into a showcase of the new style. It was through his involvement with the DIA that Crofton met Marcel Breuer, the Bauhaus designer and teacher who had emigrated to Britain in 1935. Gane employed Breuer to completely remodel the interior of his own house in Bristol to include a range of furniture. The living room was lined entirely with plywood. The house was then provided with a range of fitted and non-fitted furniture made by Gane’s craftsmen to Breuer’s specifications, of which this armchair is one.

The following year (1936), Breuer designed a sales pavilion for Gane’s at the Royal Agricultural show. In later life Breuer would cite this as one of the two really significant buildings in his career, the other being the UNESCO building in Paris.

The design of this armchair owes much to similar seating designed by Finnish designer Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) in the early 1930s. It was one of the pieces of Breuer furniture advertised in P.E. Gane's "Modern Furniture" catalogue of 1936. The original intention for Breuer’s designs to go into production using specialist steam bending equipment seems never to have materialised. As it is, this prototype has arms formed from two sections of solid timber, intended to resemble plywood, pegged together.

The chair remained in the possession of the Gane family until 1976, when it was acquired by Ken Stradling with other pieces from the Gane House.

Ken Stradling was formerly Managing Director and Chairman of the Bristol Guild of Applied Art. Stradling joined “The Guild” in 1948 and over the next 50 years developed it as a major centre for the sale and appreciation of contemporary British and European design.