Dressing table, Designed by Marcel Breuer, made by P.E. Gane Ltd. for Isokon, 1935, Bristol

Dressing table comprising one wall mounted mirror flanked by two circular viewing mirrors and two drawer units.

Both drawer units are freestanding. They sit on either side of a tall wall-mounted mirror to which the circular viewing mirrors are attached. The drawer units are of sycamore-veneered plywood with laminated red tops. The units have hinged pivoting drawers: hinged at the right-hand side with curved drawer sides on the left. One unit has seven drawers, the other four. Each drawer has a D-form chromium-plated handle.

Purchased with Art Fund support

This dressing table is part of a group of furniture that was commissioned from the architect Marcel Breuer (1902-81) by Mrs Dorothea Ventris (d. 1940), for her flat at Highpoint, Highgate, London.

Born in Hungary in 1902, Marcel Breuer moved to Germany at the age of 18 to study at the newly-established Bauhaus school in Weimar. After an outstanding career as a student, Breuer was made Master in charge of the carpentry workshop in 1925. He left the Bauhaus in 1927, going on to work as an architect in Germany, Switzerland and other European countries. During this period he designed buildings, interiors, exhibtions and furniture, including some of the most innovative and important tubular steel furniture of the 20th century.

After the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis in 1933, Breuer never returned to Berlin. With difficulty, and with the assistance of Walter Gropius and others, Breuer emigrated to Britain in 1935. As one of the conditions under which he was allowed to emigrate, he founded the architectural partnership Breuer and Yorke with F.R.S. Yorke before arriving in England.

Breuer was commissioned to work on the Ventris flat while at Breuer and Yorke. The flat was in Highpoint, an ultra-modern block designed by the Russian emigre architect Berthold Lubetkin. Mrs Ventris hired Breuer to design the flat's interior, in which he used specially designed free-standing and built-in furniture to organize the space. Sycamore-veneered plywood was used throughout the flat, tying the space together with its distinctive colour and surface.

Reason For Production: Commission

W.23:1 to 5-2003