Why everyone has this chair

Key Takeaways

[Music] seny Chrome legs elegant caned seat Rich birch wood introducing the chesca what's like the right amount of creepy for this the chesca also known as the b32 b64 if it has arms is kind of having a moment full disclosure I am literally sitting on one right now have been since at least 1999 but this chair is more than just a throne for toddler me to practice my penmanship it's more than a trendy Decor item or popular movie set piece it's a design icon in the collections of some of the world's most major museums and considered among the most important chairs of the 20th century so where did this chair come from and why is it everywhere [Music] the chesa chair Story begins here at the bow house the famed German art school/ commune NeverEnding party/ genius Factory it was founded in 1919 by this architect Walter gropius his goal was to merge art and Industry creating work that was deeply modern and simultaneously beautiful functional and reproducible which was a pretty radical change from the exclusivity and ornamental Frills of other design movements look at these two teapots both from 1920s Germany this one is beautiful but mostly decorative on this bow house one everything is intentional the curved wooden handle makes pouring easy and comfortable the slanted spout prevents drips and it definitely looks sturdy and Industrial except this teapot was handcrafted out of silver and Ebony it was wildly expensive still is even though bow house designs looked utilitarian most of them were basically impossible to make at scale that is until our hero Marcel Brer Mr chesa chair himself stepped in and changed everything Brer was an early student of the bow house and in 1925 he was ruminating on their whole manufacturing problem when inspiration struck he looked at his bicycle's handlebars and realized to paraphrase bent tubular steel was bow house as heck it's Sleek light shiny strong and this one's a direct quote can be bent like macaroni first he made this chair now known as the vosy chair and then a bunch of other chairs and tables and stools and this uh couch but for Brer these pieces still weren't modern enough the ultimate creation he wrote would be a chair that floated on an elastic column of air and in 1928 Brer had another one of those Eureka moments he flipped a stool on its side and thus the canal chair was born soon after he debuted the b32 and with it he achieved the purest manifestation of bow house ideals a chair that showcased the gleaming modernity of chrome seemed to defy the laws of gravity and crucially only required a handful of pre-made materials to make soon tonet a company already world famous for mass-producing bent wooden chairs was making tons of b32 and as other bow house Ians designed their own versions a bunch of other tubular Canever chairs but it's pretty universally held that this is the best of them most cver chairs require braces which both ruins the visual lines of the chair and makes them rigid and uncomfortable Brier's chair doesn't need those thanks to its structured wooden framing which holds everything together but still allows for flexibility and bounce that added structure also means the chair can be made from one continuous length of Steel which is bent 16 times rather than a bunch of different tubes fused together which makes a chair lighter and easier to make plus the cane gives the chair an Airy transparency a feature tone it played up in their 1930s advertising of which there was a lot tonet really wanted these designs to take off the problem was they were expensive and they seemed a little too modern for the average home until the 6 a sort of hybrid futuristic look became all the rage and the b32 fit in perfectly gavina the go-to Italian modernist brand began selling it and they gave it a new name chesca from Franchesca br's daughter's name as the mid-century look picked up steam so did the chesca but unlike those newer designs the chesa wasn't copyrighted so manufacturers started making complete legal chesica copies and marketing them as Brer style chairs by 1980 the chesca was ubiquitous One reviewer noted it was as common as imitated and as mass-produced as a pair of Calvin CL which at the time was just about the highest praise there was after that the chesca never quite went away today there are many places to buy one and countless secondhand ones floating around which only seems to drop dri up demand its appeal is only getting broader as both bow house and modernism become popular again in short this chair is everywhere because ever since its Inception nearly a century ago it's been a design Marvel and quite frankly cool as hell [Music]