S 43 special edition by Thonet

This special edition of the tubular steel classic, with its vivid new colour options, is being brought out to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus design school. The Bauhaus can truly be called the cradle of modern tubular steel furniture, since it was there in the 1920s that some of the most important designers started to experiment with the new malleable steel tubing, along with many other colleagues the world over, amongst them the Dutch architect Mart Stam. In 1926, Stam developed the first prototype of a cantilevered, tubular steel chair. In 1927, in the context of the Stuttgarter Weißenhof-Siedlung project, Stam worked alongside Bauhaus teachers such as Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe on the subject of tubular steel furniture and cantilever chairs, which resulted in a chair without back legs, known at Thonet today as the S 33. Stam was later granted the copyright for the cantilevered chairs, which is held to this day by Thonet. In 1931, an optimised version of his earlier design was added to the Thonet range in Germany, known today as the S 43.

The classic S 43 available in new colour options: the clear, restrained form of the S 43 makes this cantilever chair an exemplary design in the modern idiom, and one which has enjoyed unbroken success. This classic by Mart Stam, who was employed as a guest lecturer at the Bauhaus from 1928-1929, is available in 11 colour options, applied as textured enamel: pure white, agate grey, anthracite grey, jet black, sulphur yellow, pure orange, traffic red, brown red, yellow green, water blue and light blue. The children’s chair option is enamelled in the following new light tones: pure white, pastel yellow, pastel red and pastel blue.