Modern Furniture By The Humble Creator Mies van der Rohe : The Outstanding Barcelona Chair

When it comes to contemporary furniture design, perhaps no other type bring out a deep sense of admiration more than that of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Respected as one of the establisher of Modern Movement in the early 20th century, the German architect Mies van der Rohe made some furnishings to match the interiors of his structures. These designs by Mies van der Rohe are renowned for one the early models of modern furniture, as they were integrated with the modernist fashions normaly found in modern architecture. One of these endless Mies van der Rohe designs is the Barcelona Chair.

Perhaps Mies van der Rohe’s most accepted furniture design, the Barcelona Chair is a plain modernist chair consisting of a light steel edge and two square cushions which works as the chair’s seat and backrest. The chair is pride and joy of the Barcelona furniture set, and was made by Mies van der Rohe for the German Pavilion display building in Barcelona, Spain in 1929. Mies van der Rohe was also said to have [team up|worked together} with German interior designer and longtime buddy Lilly Reich during the design development for the Barcelona Chair.

Mies van der Rohe was loved of mixing both the conventional and modern in his furnishings, and the Barcelona Chair was no exclusion to this. The chair’s X-shaped frame is said to be stimulated by the ancient Egyptian folding chair, and is created from bolted pieces of chrome-plated steel. Barcelona chairs built after the 1950s replaced the chrome-plated steel with stainless steel, which presented the framework a more appealing form. The cushions for now are enclosed in either ivory-white pigskin or black leather and are fastene to the frame all through a system of discreetly-placed press studs.

When the German Pavilion was exposed during the 1929 International Expo, reviewer called the Barcelona Chair “a design worthy of kings”. This, by chance, was quite appropriate as the chair’s price total to nearly $6, 281, which is a royal sum even to present standards. Nowadays reproductions of the Barcelona Chair are readily accessible] and are only a fraction of the original chair’s cost, get about $2,000.