Dormitory Furniture for Rhoads Hall, Bryn Mawr College: Dresser

Editor: This is Marcel Breuer's "Dormitory Furniture for Rhoads Hall, Bryn Mawr College: Dresser". It looks like it's made of wood. It feels very functional, but in an elegant way. What do you see in its form? Curator: Note the unadorned planes and the rigorous geometry. The drawer fronts are flush, creating a unified surface broken only by the horizontal reveals. The material itself, the wood grain, provides the only applied texture. Editor: So it's about the shape and the material itself? Curator: Precisely. Consider the negative space of the recessed pulls. They offer a subtle play of shadow and light, a visual counterpoint to the mass of the dresser. Editor: That's a perspective I hadn't considered. I guess simplicity can be quite complex. Curator: Indeed. Breuer's mastery is in the reduction to essential forms. The functional becomes the aesthetic.