Armchair by Koloman Moser
The Wiener Werkstätte’s cubic armchair, with a grid as its only ornament.
Moser designed the armchair for the sanatorium at Purkersdorf outside Vienna, one of the Wiener Werkstätte’s first large commissions. It shows the geometric Viennese style that ran counter to Art Nouveau’s curves. Examples are in the MAK and the Leopold Museum in Vienna.
Materials: Beech, painted or stained black and white, caning
Manufacture: Square members joined at right angles; sides and back filled with a lattice of squares.
The chair is a cube, and its sides are filled with an even chequer of squares.
Black against white: the colour follows the construction.