The Minister's rulings follow recommendations by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decisions be deferred.  This reflects the outstanding importance of the items for the study of modernism in Britain, the study of modern furniture and for their association with the intellectual life of the nation.

The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made at the following agreed fair market prices:

The Secretary

The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art

Department for Culture, Media and Sport

2-4 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5DH

NOTES TO EDITORS

Pictures of the items can be downloaded free of charge from our site on PA Picselect. Please go to the DCMS folder situation within the Arts section of Picselect either at http://www.papicselect.com/ or through the PA bulletin board.

By the time he arrived in London in 1935, Breuer could already be described as the most influential furniture designer of the twentieth century.  He had left his native Hungary at the age of 18 to study at the recently-opened Bauhaus school in Weimar.  He left the Bauhaus in 1927 to practise as an architect and worked in Germany, Switzerland and other European countries designing buildings, interiors for existing flats and houses, exhibitions and, most importantly, some of the century's most innovative and original tubular steel furniture.  After the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis in 1933, Breuer emigrated to Britain in 1935, having established, with F.S.R. Yorke, the architectural partnership of Breuer & Yorke (the creation of which was a Home Office condition for his immigration). 
 

Following her divorce, Dora Ventris moved to Highpoint (designed by the Russian emigré architect Berthold Lubetkin) in 1936, with her young son Michael.  She hired Breuer to design the interior, in which he used specially designed, free-standing and built-in furniture to organize the space.  Mrs Ventris's commissioning of the recently-arrived Bauhaus architect was not the only indication of her interest in modernism.  She also displayed in the flat two pictures by Picasso, one by Juan Gris, and a sculpture by Henry Moore.  Mrs Ventris knew Moore as well as Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson.  The association of the Breuer chair and dressing table with the Ventris flat is, on its own, significant in the history of modernism in Britain.  However, the later history of the Ventris furniture added further to its importance. 

Following his mother's death in 1940, Michael Ventris continued to live in the flat, eventually with his wife Lois, a fellow student at the Architectural Association.  In the early 1950s they began designing a new house at 19, North End, Hampstead.  They specifically designed the house to accommodate the Breuer furniture.  At precisely the same time, Michael Ventris, an amateur archaeologist and linguist of extraordinary ability, deciphered the Minoan Linear B script, an archaic form of Greek.  His work on these texts has recently been described by his biographer as `the greatest intellectual achievement in archaeological decipherment, comparable with the discovery of DNA's structure by Crick and Watson'.

The armchair is extremely rare.  Only two were made, the present example and another sold at Sotheby's in the same sale.  The armchair represents a new direction in Breuer's work.  It shows a turning away from rectilinear geometry, a softening of his modernist design vocabulary, which had previously been seen in his first plywood furniture, Isokon furniture made in London (1935-36).  His use of wood was the result of two factors:  the nature of modernism in Britain, and a shift in his own aesthetic development which took place in the mid-1930s.

Before he came to Britain, Breuer designed mainly metal furniture. Among continental modernists metal furniture was the embodiment of their aim to create a brave new world in the aftermath of the devastation of the First World War. Like concrete in building, metal in furniture symbolized their aspiration to mass produce affordable furnishings for the new Utopia they were aiming to create.   Modernism in Britain was different in its character than on the Continent. Traditional notions of comfort and decoration continued to hold sway in Britain, and the intellectual side of modernism, as well as what was seen as its relentless cosmopolitanism, met with scepticism and mistrust. Metal furniture, regarded as a form of extremism, was never accepted in the domestic interior in Britain, making it unacceptable for Breuer to work in that material. Within Breuer's work, the Ventris armchair represents a shift away from the geometrical purity and machine aesthetic of early modernism. This was part of a trend towards the organic which made itself felt in avant-garde art of the 1930s. The shapes of the sides of the chair and, indeed, the overall form, were informed by the furniture of Alvar Aalto and by Breuer's interest in contemporary Surrealist and biomorphic art, especially the wood relief sculptures of Jean (Hans) Arp and the paintings of Joan Miro. In his Isokon furniture Breuer moved in the direction of biomorphism, retaining a gentle, flowing line, and that furniture found favour with British modernists.
 

It has been suggested that the taste for this aesthetic today is largely governed by generation. Whereas some found this biomorphic style clumsy, it is also popular enough with younger people that the Ventris armchair has, since 1999, been reproduced for the general marketplace for the first time in its history and garnered considerable attention in the design press. 

While plywood, as a material, does not rate highly within the hierarchies of traditional furniture, it was uniquely suited to design of this period and deserves to be considered on its own terms. Plywood was as much a mark of modernism in Britain as tubular steel was in Germany.
 

The dressing table is unique and there is nothing similar designed by Breuer either for a British commission or in Britain.  It is a subtle design of two wall-hung cabinets and mirrors which function as a dressing table. It was conceived as if it were an example of abstract sculpture and presented itself as a combination of volumetric and flat rectangles and two circular forms. The sculptural qualities of the geometric piece were emphasised.  It was, however, still a single and recognisable dressing table, an updated form of a traditional furniture type. Slightly later, Breuer began to combine wall-hung cabinet or drawer units with entirely separate mirrors. This enabled him to employ a standardised repertoire of forms which could be used in different ways and even in different rooms for varied uses. The use of these wall-hung cupboards became a trademark feature of Breuer's flats and houses of the 1920s and 1930s, and it is within that context that the Ventris dressing table should be seen.

Unusual even within the context of Breuer's wall-hung units were the hinged drawers.  These added considerably to the ingenuity of the design. The use of hinged drawers (often hung on piano hinges) is usually associated with furniture making of very high quality—as was the case with this furniture—and has a long pedigree.  It is especially associated with the finest eighteenth-century German cabinet making. Accordingly, the Breuer pieces may be seen as part of a tradition in German cabinet design.

From the 1920s, public awareness of dressing rooms or dressing room furniture became more acute. With changes in society after the First World War, and especially the public acceptance of cosmetics for respectable women, the image of the dressing table changed. In grander houses, both of traditional or Art Deco design, dressing rooms remained popular.  However, modernist interiors, with their open plans and/or generally modest size did not generally have separate dressing rooms and the fittings of a dressing room were provided within the bedroom. Fitting them into limited space was the challenge that Breuer met especially well. Breuer's Ventris dressing table was, therefore, highly significant and original as an innovative example of the form.

A key chapter in the history of modernism in Britain is the contribution of émigrés.  Some, like Dorothea Ventris, who came as a free migrant from a wealthy Polish family, brought a continental aesthetic sensibility, notably a desire to engage with modern art. Others, like Marcel Breuer, who was Jewish and fled European fascism, finding safety and work in Britain, brought with them the vibrant ideas and aesthetics of modernism and profoundly influenced the shape of modern culture. The Ventris armchair and dressing table represent the contribution of those émigrés and are, in terms of patronage and design, highly significant case studies in British modernism. 
  

The Ventris armchair and dressing table are extremely well documented, not only in terms of their provenance but also in terms of their design.  The flat was well photographed and published in the 1930s and original drawings for the chair and dressing table survive along with documents related to the Ventris flat. 

The recommended price at which the application to export the armchair is deferred is £ 41,790 (including VAT); the recommended price for the dressing table is £44,248.50 (including VAT).