This chair was designed by Marcel Breuer, a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer.
The design of the chair was novel for the time as it used standard pieces of chrome-plated steel tubing commonly used for bicycle frames. The genesis of the first tubular steel chair started from Breuer’s inspiration of the “strength, lightness and utility of the bicycle he was riding.” He initially experimented using lengths of tubular aluminium (an unsuccessful experiment) before opting for “precision steel”.

Tubing of this sort was also seen as hygienic, in that the surface could be easily cleaned. Hygiene was a major preoccupation of the modernist movement.

The B33 also uses the strength of the steel to create a cantilevered base, a fundamental break from the traditional use of chair legs. However it was not the first cantilevered chair. In 1926-1927 a side chair was released by Mart Stam and then a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe armchair from 1927 was launched made from tubular steel.) Breuer’s first cantilevered chair was the B32, which was never patented and consisted of a steel support, with a sturdy wooden frame to the cane seat and backing, unlike the B33 which consisted of a single continuous steel frame and “eisengarn” fabric or leather for the seat and back. After a legal dispute in the German courts due to the similarity of the chairs, Mart Stam was eventually credited as the original design and was awarded the European patent for the cantilever chair. As the shape was so similar, the difference in material and properties was thought inconsequential, even though the flexible behaviour of the Breuer chair gave real comfort . Breuer “maintained that he was working on the idea in 1926 and had even discussed it with Stam”. New research indicates that Mart Stam was inspired by a cantilever tubular steel seat he saw installed in a 1926 Tatra T12 two door saloon car.

This chair was acquired as part of the Shekou Project, an international partnership between the V&A and China Merchant Shekou Holdings (CMSK) to open a new cultural platform called Design Society in Shekou. It was included in the inaugural exhibition, ‘Values of Design’, in the V&A Gallery at Design Society in a section exploring new materials.