The Hungarian native came to the Bauhaus in 1920 at only 18, following a short course of art studies in Vienna. He began working there as an apprentice in the cabinetry shop, of which he ultimately became director. His colleagues included artists with similarly idealistic views, among them Josef Albers, Alma Buscher, Erich Dieckmann and Peter Keler. He started creating his first furniture designs in 1921, such as an expressionistic/ folkloristic so-called “African Chair”, tables and chairs for children, a vanity table and a cabinet with integrated vitrine. A leather easychair put together out of cubes stemming from these early days looks just as constructivist as a series of slatted chairs which reveal a close kinship with the work of Gerrit Rietveld. Breuer viewed his later furniture as “apparatus for today’s way of life”. The pieceshad to be practical, lightweight, easy to dismantle, hygienic and aff o rdable; a brusque refusal of any longing for mere cosy comfort. The B 3 tubular steel easy- chair of 1925 – later known as the Club Chair or Wassily– fulfilled all these criteria. Although it did not constitute the object of daily use that he had hoped to create, it did set a precedent for a furniture type with which the industrial aesthetic could gain a foothold in the living room. B 3 was – like jazz and neon – an emblem of Modernism, later going on to become the mother of all design classics and setting off a wave of tubular steel furniture worldwide.