At the time, Stam was not yet interested in the bobbing effect achieved with cold-bent steel tubing. Rather, it was the simple, unornamented design that captured his attention and that fit so perfectly the modern architecture of the day. The design combined clarity of form and aesthetic economy of construction with the advantage of improved comfort: The comfortable »free-swinging« or bobbing effect, which made opulent cushioning totally unnecessary, was said to feel like »sitting on air«.
Only the tensile properties of the material from which it is made, cold-bent tubular steel, enables the flexible cantilever effect. The comfort is owed to the flexibility of the tubular steel, which makes sophisticated padding unnecessary. The combination of tubular steel with wicker, wood, leather, fabric or mesh results in the creation of furniture with a timeless, lightweight design, which is in also highly flexible and variable in its use. All furniture is produced in the Thonet plant in Frankenberg (Germany) with the greatest amount of care and the traditionally high level of quality.
These chairs are the first cantilever chairs in furniture history. They were used for the first time in 1927 in the Weissenhof-Siedlung in Stuttgart. Starting in 1925, Mart Stam experimented with gas pipes that he connected with flanges and developed the principle of cantilevering chairs that no longer rest on four legs. He thus created a construction principle that became an important building block in the history of modern furniture design with its formal reservation. In the beginning, Stam was not yet focused on the flexing effect of the bent tubular steel; rather, he was interest in the clear form, which perfectly fit in with the modern buildings of the time.
