London-based furniture manufacturer Isokon Plus has unveiled two previously unseen dining tables designed in 1937 by Marcel Breuer, the acclaimed Bauhaus architect and furniture designer, but never realised until now.
The blueprints for the tables were discovered during an audit of the Isokon archives and their potential and appeal was immediately recognized by the Isokon Plus team. With no physical prototypes as a reference, the caftspeople at Isokon Plus had to create each table using only the blueprints and some photograph references.
The first table, which has been named One Leg Table, was made from a blueprint dated 01.06.1937 and is constructed with birch time legs and central upright column. It features a protective metal strip running up the sides and a birch plywood top.
Research by the Isokon Plus team unearthed some photographs of a very similar table Marcel Breuer designed for Swiss furniture company Embru in 1932 and a similar version with a ‘lazy Susan’ for another Swiss company Wohnbedarf in the same year.
The blueprint for this table is also held by the prestigious Breuer Archive at the Syracuse University Libraries. Isokon Plus also discovered that the table in the blueprint can be found in the dining room of The Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts and is likely to have been made by Marcel Breuer for Walter Gropius. These photograph references all helped the Isokon Plus team to fine tune the prototypes and create the final version of the table that is now for sale.
The blueprints for the second table, Round Dining Table are dated 20.04.1937. It is constructed from four identical pressed plywood pieces, which are glued together to form the base. The table also has a birch plywood top. Isokon Plus were unable to find any photographic references to this design other than the original drawing and based on Isokon Plus’s research it seems that this is the first time this table design has been physically realised.
“It has been such a privilege to delve into the rich Isokon archive and realise two tables that time had forgotten. These tables may have been designed in 1937 but they have modern beauty perfect for today’s consumer,” says Ed Carpenter.
