Adolf Loos and Heinrich Kulka for Thonet, an Arts and Crafts...

Hammer

£650

Adolf Loos and Heinrich Kulka for Thonet, an Arts and Crafts oak fireside or chimney armchair, circa 1931, with leather lattice back and leatherette bowed seat, studded with bronzed mails, the hobnail carved front stretcher uniting skate square section legs with ogee tongue feet, supporting shaped plank arms, pointed arch finials, 65cm high, the seat 33cm high

Note: Austrian architect and designer Adolf Loos (1870-1933) was one of the great pioneers of modernism in Continental Europe, influencing generations of post World War One architects the world over, including the Bauhaus in Germany. His apprentice and collaborator Heinrich Kulka, studied in Vienna and worked under Loos including in the development of the famous Raumplan analysis of spatial design. Designed for the Melena and Hugo Semmler apartment in Pilsen in 1931 and used in the Werkbund housing estate in Vienna in 1932 (where Kulka was Loos' assistant and collaborative furnisher for houses 49 to 52), the chimney chair combined the craftsmanship and functionality of the Arts and Crafts movement; which Loos pioneered over the Austrian Secessionist movement decades earlier. For examples of this chair see: Loos-Pilsen Connections, Gallery of West Bohemia, Pilsen 201, p.154 (illustrated); Werkbundsiedlung Wien 1932, exhibition catalogue Wien Museum, p.207, fig.215; Apartment Semler: Rukschcio, Schachel, Adolf Loos, p. 637 and 646 as well as Adolf Loos, apartments, p.101