Acclaimed furniture works from the Bauhaus polymath

Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) is without doubt one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture. Equally significant, though smaller in scale, are his adventures in furniture design. Like any good architect, Mies knew that architecture and furniture inevitably slip into dialogue and affect one another (he brought his knowledge of recent industrial technologies to bear on many of the chairs and tables he produced) and consequently, his earliest designs, beginning in the mid-1920s, were conceived for specific interiors. At first furniture design seemed more daunting than architecture: "There are endless possibilities and many problems--the chair has to be light, it has to be strong, it has to be comfortable. It is almost easier to build a skyscraper than a chair," he once declared. But Mies soon found novel ways to marry traditional luxurious fabrics and leathers with contemporary chrome frames, while effecting a distinct separation between the supporting structure and the supported surfaces. Today his modern furniture pieces such as the Barcelona chair, table, ottoman and day bed and the Bruno chair are acclaimed popular classics.