Vienna, 1932, solid walnut, the seat and backrest upholstered and covered with textile fabric, sofa height 61 cm, width 200 cm, depth 80 cm, height of seat 48 cm; armchair height 59 cm, width 65 cm, depth 66 cm, height of seat 44 cm. (DRAX)

Provenance: apartment of Henry P. Glass’s sister, Vienna, until her death in the mid-1990s; passed on by inheritance, private ownership, Vienna

The offered pieces of furniture (272–276) are important examples of Henry P. Glass’s early Viennese period. Born in 1911 as Heinz Glass and trained as an architect at Vienna’s University of Technology, he soon became a successful interior and furniture designer. <br<br />In 1939 he managed to emigrate to New York, where he worked in the studios of Russel Wright and Gilbert Rohde. In 1947 he founded his own company, Henry P. Glass Associates, in Chicago, which specialised in furniture and industrial design. Over a period of 20 years he was also a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago. Only few uncontested works from Glass’s Viennese have survived, so that this group of furniture he designed for his sister is of great significance.

Lit.:cf. Henry P. Glass. Industrial Design, Interieurs, Architektur, exhib. cat., Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 1997 – Henry P. Glass, The Shape of Manmade Things, Chicago, 1996