There is a saying that almost every Modernist architect of the early 20th century designed at least one tubular-steel chair. So many great designers, so many remarkable chairs - but who was first to take the radical step of removing the back legs altogether?
The answer is surprisingly complicated. Nearly a century after the first cantilever chairs appeared, the authorship of this revolutionary design continues to cause confusion.
With the help of Otakar Macel, a leading authority on tubular-steel furniture and author of 2100 Metal Tubular Chairs, we explore the intertwined story of Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer and Anton Lorenz - and the legal dispute that helped shape one of the defining furniture forms of Modernism.
Thonet advertisement for tubular-steel furniture by leading Modernist architects, including Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer. Image credit: By Barnabas archive
A New Kind of Chair
The cantilever chair represented a complete break with conventional furniture construction. Instead of being supported by four legs, the seat was carried by a continuous frame that rested on the floor at the front and extended backwards beneath the sitter.
The result appeared almost impossible: a chair seemingly suspended in space.
Tubular steel made this transformation possible. Strong, light and suitable for industrial production, it allowed designers to create furniture from a continuous line rather than a conventional arrangement of separate legs, rails and supports.
The manufacture of a tubular-steel cantilever chair, showing the frame being formed from continuous steel tubing. Image credit: Thonet
Marcel Breuer and the Tubular-Steel Experiment
Marcel Breuer was among the first designers to recognise the possibilities of tubular steel for domestic furniture. While teaching and working at the Bauhaus during the mid-1920s, he developed an influential series of tables, stools and chairs constructed from the material.
By 1925, Breuer was already producing tubular-steel furniture with continuous structural frames. His experiments established much of the visual and technical language from which the cantilever chair would emerge.
Mart Stam, however, was the first to present a chair without conventional rear legs to the public.
Breuer later maintained that Stam had developed his chair after a conversation between them about Breuer’s experiments with tubular furniture. According to Breuer’s version of events, the underlying idea had therefore originated with him - even though Stam was the first to turn it into a publicly exhibited chair.
Marcel Breuer, left, and Mart Stam, right—the two designers at the centre of the dispute over the origins of the cantilever chair. Image credit: By Barnabas archive
Mart Stam and the Weissenhof Estate
In 1927, Mart Stam presented his chair as part of the famous Weissenhof Estate exhibition in Stuttgart.
Organised by the Deutscher Werkbund and directed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the exhibition brought together 17 leading European architects. Its 21 buildings and 63 homes demonstrated radical new approaches to architecture, construction and modern living.
The participants included Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Peter Behrens, Hans Scharoun, Josef Frank, Bruno Taut and Mies himself. Mart Stam was among the youngest architects invited to contribute.
Plan of the 1927 Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, identifying the participating architects and their individual buildings. Image credit: https://thecharnelhouse.org
Period advertisement for the Werkbund exhibition Die Wohnung, held at the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart in 1927. Image credit: https://thecharnelhouse.org
Stam furnished his interiors with a chair constructed from lengths of rigid steel gas pipe connected by right-angled elbow joints. Its uncompromising form followed a single angular line from the backrest, beneath the seat and down to the floor.
Unlike the more flexible cantilever chairs that followed, Stam’s prototype did not spring gently beneath the sitter. Its importance lay instead in the clarity of its structural idea: it was recognisably a chair, but one freed from the traditional arrangement of four legs.
Interior of one of Mart Stam’s Weissenhof houses, furnished with his revolutionary chairs constructed without conventional rear legs. Image credit: Thonet
Mart Stam’s drawing for a cantilever chair alongside an early prototype constructed from rigid steel piping and elbow joints. Image credit: Thonet
From Rigid Geometry to a Flexible Frame
Stam’s idea immediately inspired other designers. Mies van der Rohe developed a more elegant version using a continuous curved frame, transforming Stam’s rigid geometry into a chair that responded gently to the sitter’s weight.
Breuer also continued working on cantilever furniture, refining the principle through lighter construction, flowing tubular-steel lines and woven or upholstered seats.
The revolutionary chair was therefore not the product of a single isolated moment. Breuer’s earlier experiments, Stam’s decisive structural concept and the subsequent developments by Mies all contributed to its evolution.
Anton Lorenz Enters the Story
The history became more complicated in 1929, when businessman, designer and patent specialist Anton Lorenz acquired rights connected with Stam’s cantilever design.
Lorenz understood both the commercial potential of tubular-steel furniture and the importance of controlling its legal protection. Through his company Desta, he began producing and marketing Stam’s cubic cantilever chair as model ST 12.
His role went far beyond that of a manufacturer. Lorenz became one of the central figures in the legal, technical and commercial development of cantilever furniture, securing rights, adapting designs and helping move experimental Modernist furniture into industrial production.
Anton Lorenz, right, who played a decisive role in protecting, producing and commercialising early cantilever-chair designs. Image credit: By Barnabas archive
Desta catalogue showing a family of cantilever chairs, including the ST 12 model associated with Mart Stam’s original design. Image Credit: By Barnabas archive
At approximately the same time, Thonet was producing a similar cantilever chair, model B 33, which its early advertising attributed to Marcel Breuer.
The similarities between the chairs - and the conflicting claims surrounding their development- eventually led to a series of legal proceedings concerning authorship and production rights.
Early Thonet advertisement for the B 33 cantilever chair, attributed at the time to Marcel Breuer. Image Credit: Thonet
A Design Dispute Reaches the Courts
The legal battles continued into the early 1930s. In 1932, a German court recognised Mart Stam’s artistic authorship of the characteristic cubic cantilever-chair form.
This decision established Stam’s important position in the history of the chair, but it did not mean that every subsequent cantilever design had been created by him. Nor did it erase Breuer’s earlier experiments with tubular steel or the contributions of Mies van der Rohe, Anton Lorenz and other designers.
The dispute involved several overlapping questions: who first conceived the structural principle, who transformed it into a recognisable design, which individual models were protected as works of applied art, and who possessed the right to manufacture and sell them.
Following the court decisions, Thonet catalogues revised the attribution of the B 33 and presented the model under Mart Stam’s name.
Lorenz subsequently transferred his company and associated production rights to Thonet. He then worked with the manufacturer as a specialist in tubular-steel furniture and patents, continuing to develop numerous variations of the cantilever form.
Later Thonet catalogue page showing the B 33 attributed to Mart Stam and the B 34 to Anton Lorenz. Image Credit: Thonet
One Chair, Many Contributors
The legal ruling gave Stam formal recognition for the cubic chair without back legs, but the wider history cannot be reduced to a single inventor.
Breuer had pioneered the use of tubular steel in furniture and continued to produce some of the most refined cantilever chairs of the Modernist period. Stam introduced the decisive chair structure to the public at Weissenhof. Mies transformed the rigid principle into a graceful and flexible curve. Lorenz secured rights, developed variations and helped bring the designs into large-scale commercial production.
Thonet then used its international manufacturing and distribution network to introduce these radical chairs to a much wider public.
Modern interior furnished with several variations of tubular-steel cantilever seating, demonstrating how rapidly the principle developed into an entire family of furniture. Image Credit: Thonet
The Legacy of the Chair Without Back Legs
Within only a few years, the cantilever chair had developed from an experimental construction made from gas pipes into one of the defining objects of 20th-century design.
It appeared in countless variations: with or without armrests, with rigid or flexible frames, and with seats made from wood, cane, fabric or leather. Although the details changed, the underlying visual idea remained remarkably powerful - a seat seemingly floating above the floor.
The story of the cantilever chair is therefore not simply a search for one inventor. It is a story of experimentation, conversation, rivalry, legal conflict and industrial ambition.
Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe and Anton Lorenz each played a different role. Together, they transformed a radical structural experiment into an enduring symbol of Modernism.
Written and researched by Martin Dohnálek, By Barnabas. Originally published 20 June 2018. Updated and expanded 14 September 2026.
Discover a Later Czechoslovak Example
A later interpretation of this revolutionary design can be found in the 1940s cantilever chair by Anton Lorenz for Kovona, currently available from the By Barnabas collection.
