Bauhaus design products distill the school’s founding argument into objects you can live with daily: form follows function, and craft must meet industry. This guide covers the best Bauhaus design products available now from the companies that hold the licenses: tubular steel chairs, the Wagenfeld lamp, art prints in the Bauhaus visual language, and the books that explain why any of it matters.
Our top picks
The picks below were selected on a single criterion: does this object make the Bauhaus argument legible? Not nostalgia, not brand recognition. The furniture and the lamp are the licensed originals, still made by Knoll and Tecnolumen. ADI does not link to unlicensed versions of these designs. The prints and books deliver the movement’s vocabulary at a price that doesn’t require an inheritance. Prices were checked in September 2026.
Knoll Wassily Chair
Premium · Marcel Breuer, 1925 · $4,373 at knoll.com
The first armchair built from tubular steel, and the clearest single object the Bauhaus produced. Knoll makes it under license, with chrome-plated tube and leather slings in the proportions Breuer specified.
Knoll Cesca Caned Side Chair
Mid-Range · Marcel Breuer, 1928 · $1,380 at knoll.com
Breuer’s cantilever with a bentwood frame and hand-woven cane seat and back. It is the most livable Bauhaus chair ever made and the most affordable licensed Breuer design.
Tecnolumen Wagenfeld WG24 Table Lamp
Premium · Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Karl J. Jucker, 1924 · through Tecnolumen retailers
An opal glass shade on a clear glass stem and a round base: the Bauhaus metal workshop’s most famous product. Tecnolumen in Bremen is the licensed manufacturer and numbers each lamp.
HAUS AND HUES Bauhaus Poster Art, Set of 3
Budget · about $55 framed
Three original blue and yellow compositions in the Bauhaus visual language, rather than copies of any one artist’s work. The cheapest way to put the movement’s geometry on a wall.
Quick decision guide
- Best overall Bauhaus investment: Knoll Wassily Chair: if you’re buying one object that makes the whole argument, this is it.
- Best everyday piece: Knoll Cesca: a Bauhaus chair you can eat dinner in every night.
- Best for a work desk: Wagenfeld WG24 lamp: glass and metal, every part doing a job.
- Best budget entry point: HAUS AND HUES Bauhaus Poster Set: the movement’s vocabulary for about $55.
- Best if you want to understand the movement before buying anything: Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus (Taschen): the visual reference, with furniture sketches and production photographs from the Bauhaus-Archiv.
- Best single-volume critical history of the school: Frank Whitford, Bauhaus (Thames & Hudson): the most readable account of why three directors ran the same school so differently.
Full comparison
| Product | Best For | Price (Sept 2026) | Maker | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wassily Chair | One statement object | $4,373 | Knoll (licensed) | Knoll |
| Cesca Caned Side Chair | Everyday dining | $1,380 | Knoll (licensed) | Knoll |
| Wagenfeld WG24 Lamp | Desk or side table | Through retailers | Tecnolumen (licensed) | Tecnolumen |
| HAUS AND HUES Poster Set | Budget wall art | about $55 | HAUS AND HUES (original designs) | Amazon |
The Bauhaus was making a specific argument. These products make it too.
The phrase “form follows function” predates the Bauhaus. Louis Sullivan coined it in 1896, and Walter Gropius made it the organizing principle of the school’s workshop method when he founded the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919 with a stated goal: end the split between art and craft in an industrialized world. By 1923, he was saying plainly that the school wanted “an architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars.” The school moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925 and from Dessau to Berlin in 1932, where the Nazis shut it down in April 1933. Its masters, among them Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Breuer, Moholy-Nagy, and Albers, emigrated primarily to the United States and continued the argument from there.
The products above are not nostalgic objects. Each one applies a still-coherent position: that an object should work, look like it works, and cost what honest materials and process cost. That the Wassily, the Cesca and the Wagenfeld lamp are all still made by licensed manufacturers a century later is its own proof.
For a broader account of what the Bauhaus was doing and why it still matters, see our Bauhaus Design Ideas post and the guide to the best Bauhaus furniture. For reading, the guide to the best Bauhaus design books compares titles by Frank Whitford, Magdalena Droste, Johannes Itten and Hans M. Wingler.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous Bauhaus furniture design?
The Wassily Chair, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925–26, is the most frequently cited Bauhaus furniture design. It was the first armchair built from tubular steel. Breuer adapted the material from bicycle handlebars, and its exposed-frame structure made the construction logic visible as a design choice. The Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe (1929, for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Exposition) is a close second, though Mies was at the Bauhaus only as its final director.
How do I know if a Wassily Chair is authentic?
In the US, Knoll makes the Wassily under license and holds the trademark to the name. An authentic chair carries a Knoll label or stamp. A new chair sold as a Wassily by anyone other than Knoll or an authorized Knoll dealer is not the licensed product. Secondhand Knoll examples are the realistic route below list price.
What did Josef Hartwig design?
Josef Hartwig designed the Bauhaus chess set in 1923, in which each piece’s shape directly encodes its legal move: cubes for rooks, diagonal forms for bishops, L-shapes for knights, a cross-and-sphere for the king. He was a sculptor and craftsman at the Bauhaus wood and sculpture workshops. It remains one of the clearest applications of Bauhaus design logic to a non-utilitarian object.
Is the Wagenfeld lamp still made?
Yes. Tecnolumen in Bremen, Germany, produces the Wagenfeld WG24 table lamp under license, using materials and proportions close to the 1924 original, and sells it through retailers in the US and Europe.
Where can I buy authentic Bauhaus-licensed products?
For furniture, Knoll holds the principal licensed Bauhaus tubular steel designs (the Wassily Chair, the Cesca and the Breuer series), and Thonet makes the Mart Stam and Breuer cantilevers it produced in the 1930s. For the Wagenfeld lamp, Tecnolumen. Museum shops at the Bauhaus institutions in Germany sell licensed editions of smaller objects.
How do I know if a Bauhaus-style product follows the original design principles?
Ask two questions: does the form follow from the function, or is it decorative geometry applied to a conventional object? And are the materials honest, meaning do they show what they are rather than hiding their construction? A Bauhaus-principle object doesn’t have ornament that doesn’t also do structural work. If a product calls itself Bauhaus-inspired but adds decorative flourishes that serve no structural purpose, it’s using the word as a style label, not a design position.
About Joe Post
Joe Post holds an MFA in Art from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and has done additional graduate work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He founded Art Design Ideas to write about design as cultural argument — the decisions, contradictions, and assumptions built into the objects we live with.
