, Vienna, c. 1927, partially black stained solid pear, shellac polish, the seats with black jute strap support, a woven cane insert to the back, height 90 cm, width 45 cm, depth 49.5 cm, height of seat 33 cm. (DRAX)

Original condition.

Provenance:
apartment of Emmi Condor, No. 7 Rathausstrasse, 1010 Vienna, until 1988

Certificate issued by the architect Georg Schrom on 24 January 2019.

Lit.:
St. Trauttmannsdorff, G. Schrom, 2 x Bauhaus in Wien, 1988, p. 98, fig. p. 101; C. Blauenstein, Das moderne Wohnprinzip. Zur Ausstellung Franz Singer – Friedl Dicker, in: Bauform, 22, 1989, pp. 11/12; D. Guardigli, A. Maniscalo, Franz Singer e Friedl Dicker, architetture e arredi 1924-1934, in: Domus, 1992, pp. 76ff (similar examples)

The chair was used in the apartment of the Condor family of industrialists at No. 7 Rathausstraße. According to the family, there was a relationship with Hugo and Alice Moller, whose apartment in the nearby No. 9 Reichsratstraße had been decorated by Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker in 1927. There is evidence that of the Moller furnishings only a suite of seating furniture survived, which is now conserved at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. It is impossible to reconstruct how many pieces of furniture were actually produced on the basis of the known sketches.

Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker ran the architectural office Singer & Dicker at No. 2 Wasserburggasse in Vienna between 1925 and 1931, and from 1927 on Singer had a second office in Schadeckgasse. This studio was run by his employee Poldi Schrom until 1938, after Singer had transferred his business to London from 1934 on. The plans, sketches, files, and correspondence were conserved after the office had been closed down and are now in the archive of Georg Schrom, Poldi Schrom’s nephew.

Franz Singer and Friedl Dicker were among the few Austrian architects who had received their training at the Bauhaus in Weimar (1919-1923). Receiving only few building contracts, they concentrated on the interior decoration of apartments and shops that were conceptually characterised by formally austere, functionalist, and room-saving designs such as folding furniture and stacking chairs. Singer’s “principle of modern living” was defined along the lines of “the economy of time, space, and money”.

“This chair design is characterised by its low seat and overly tall backrest, led up at a right angle. These features can also be found in chair types Franz Singer designed for the apartment of Hugo and Alice Moller (see the sketch). There are no drawings for this chair among the documents I keep, but it seems to be a variant of the nesting chair designed for Alice Moller’s music and living room. As can be seen in the first layout drawing, it can be pushed underneath a larger chair, similar to the idea of nesting tables. A further feature typical of Franz Singer is how the legs are set off at the rear. Moreover, he experimented with the covering. The woven cane insert is pulled over the curved wooden frame – the black dyed jute straps are mounted flush with the surface of the seat.
The choice of materials and the colours similarly recur in Singer’s later furniture designs: the use of various hardwoods such as beech, maple, or muted pear – with parts of the frames stained in colours. These characteristics can also be found in the wooden stacking chair Model F.S. Type S100. The frame of this model was made of beech or birch – it is indicated in the first layout drawing which parts should be stained black. A similar model was also produced in 1932 for the kindergarten of the Goethehof housing estate in Vienna.
In 1927 Franz Singer and his colleague and collaborator Bruno Pollak began developing telescope and stackable furniture, which was used for a number of interior decoration projects.” (Georg Schrom)