Mart Stam Model S33 Leather Cantilever Chairs By Fasem Italy Circa 1980

Mart Stam Model S33 Leather Cantilever Chairs By Fasem Italy Circa 1980

A beautiful and iconic pair of Mart Stam Model S33 leather cantilever chairs by Fasem, Italy, 1980s. The chairs with a leather seat, back and arms on a cantilevered chrome tubular metal frame, are extremely comfortable and look superb, makers stamp to the underside of both chairs.

History
This cantilever chair comes from a prototype Stam made for his wife around 1926. He used pieces of grey tubular steel, connected each other by “L” joints, normally used for natural gas pipes. The stability was guaranteed by a horizontal bar, which kept the legs rigid, eliminated in later reproductions. Stam’s intention was to make a chair that was functional, modern, comfortable and, above all, lightweight and easy to move. This idea of a chair without back legs, which used the tensile properties of steel, was studied by many in that period (including Stam, Breuer and Mies), and its intellectual property rights were object of a dispute in German courts, which ruled in favour of Stam, it is still one of the best-selling chairs in the world.