Sitzmaschine Chair with Adjustable Back (model 670)
The Sitzmaschine, or “machine for sitting,” was designed by Hoffmann for his Purkersdorf Sanatorium in Vienna. The sanatorium was one of the first important commissions given to the Wiener Werkstätte, a collaborative workshop founded in 1903 by Hoffmann and Koloman Moser and which espoused many of the British Arts and Crafts movement’s tenets of good design and high-quality craftsmanship. It represents one of Hoffmann’s earliest experiments in unifying a building and its furnishings as a total work of art.
The exposed structure and simplified forms of the Sitzmaschine make clear reference to the Morris chair, an adjustable-back Arts and Crafts chair pioneered by the English designer William Mo ...
The exposed structure and simplified forms of the Sitzmaschine make clear reference to the Morris chair, an adjustable-back Arts and Crafts chair pioneered by the English designer William Mo ...
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c. 1905
Bent beechwood and sycamore panels
110.5 x 71.8 x 81.3 cm
361.1993
Image and text © MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2019
Where you'll find this
Permanent collection