The collection
Dining table with four chairs. The table has a black Formica top and continuous bent-tubular-steel legs. The cantilevered chairs are also made of continuous tubes of steel with black-upholstered cushions.
1930

Dining Table and Four Chairs

Designed by
Donald Deskey (1894-1989)
Material
Chromium-plated tubular steel, plastic laminate, upholstery
Produced by
Ypsilanti Reed Furniture Company, Ionia, Michigan
Dimensions
Table: 71.8 x 152.5 x 76.2 cm; Chairs: 81.4 x 40.6 x 54.4 cm (each)

Donald Deskey, best known for his 1932 Radio City Music Hall interiors, was one of the first American designers to introduce tubular-steel furniture in North America. This table features tubular steel and plastic laminate—novel materials in 1930 that were being used by European architects such as Marcel Breuer. Deskey’s side chairs, in fact, are a nod to a chair Breuer designed in 1928.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection, gift of Victoria Barr from the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.,* D88.139.1–5