The story of the Thonet chair begins in 1830 in Prussia when Michael Thonet, a craftsman with a decade-old woodworking shop, started experimenting with techniques for bending wood into curved shapes.
Thonet’s first success came during an exhibition in Koblenz in 1861, where Prince Metternich noticed his furniture and invited him to move to Vienna to work at court (the emperor was a lover of furniture). This move allowed Thonet to expand his bentwood furniture business, benefiting from the cultural life of the capital.
From 1842, Thonet and his family opened a shop in Vienna, where their great fortune began. Thanks to the good reputation he established at court, Michael Thonet received prestigious commissions and patents for his bentwood techniques. In 1851, he participated in the legendary Great Exhibition, solidifying his success and starting to reach an international audience.
In 1853, the family founded the company “Gebrüder Thonet” (Thonet Brothers), consisting of Michael and his five sons.
From that point on, the Thonets began opening shops and factories, attending fairs and exhibitions, and conquering all of Europe with their chairs, tables, coat racks, and other furniture pieces—the first mass-produced furniture company in design history.
Thonet Bentwood Chairs
Over the course of nearly two hundred years, Thonet has created hundreds of pieces of furniture, using techniques and materials that have continually evolved over time.
Thonet’s greatest contribution to design history is their bentwood chairs. These were the first pieces of furniture to be mass-produced in such quantities that they could serve a vast audience and be affordable, all while being designed according to principles of functionality and economy.
Chair number 14, 1859
The No. 14 Chair is a cornerstone in the history of Thonet chairs and in the history of interior design. Also known as the “first consumer chair,” Thonet’s bistro chair was lightweight, functional, durable, essential in both design and construction methods, and most importantly, affordable. It is made with six pieces of bentwood, 10 screws, and two nuts. Its price and durability made it the best-selling chair of the last century, unmatched and unrivaled. It was the chair of the classic Viennese bistro, and thanks to its transportability (sold in packages of ten easy-to-transport and assemble chairs), durability, and price, it quickly became the preferred chair for any public space, be it a hotel, café, or institutional setting. To understand the scale of the operation, in 1875 Thonet manufactured 620,000 units: they had created the first mass-produced product in history.
Chair number 18, 1876
The most important project after Michael Thonet’s death in 1871 was the famous No. 18 Chair. Designed in 1876, this model immediately became the quintessential Viennese café chair. After the No. 14, the No. 18 Chair was the most affordable in the catalog, but it had a few advantages over the famous sister. The backrest, seat, and legs were identical to the No. 14, with the difference being in the backrest. The No. 18 Chair had a directly connected backrest and seat which provided greater support to the person sitting and increased the chair’s robustness and stability.
Chair number 811, 1930
The year 1899 marked the beginning of a new era in Thonet’s bentwood world. The renowned German manufacturer designed the No. 811 chair, also available as an armchair version (with the addition of bentwood armrests). The significant innovation of this chair is that it was designed by architect Adolf Loos for the interiors of the Café Museum in Vienna. Until then, Thonet had only produced furniture designed internally, but from this point on, due to the success of the No. 811, the company began collaborating with many other avant-garde architects of the time, including Gustav Siegel, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner, and Marcel Kammerer.
Armchair 209 or "Le Corbusier"
In the postwar reconstruction era, Thonet and his associates resumed production of old furniture and chair models, finding great public success once again. This was due to the durability and affordability of Thonet furniture, as well as the admiration for Thonet chairs among young architects of the 1920s, who were modernist and radical.
During the 1920s, with the rise of modernism, championed by Le Corbusier, Thonet chairs experienced a revival. Architects idealized them because they were produced according to principles of economy, functionality, and anti-decoration. Thonet chairs were beautiful precisely because they fulfilled their function in both form and materials without adding anything superfluous. The factory production process also gave them a strong affinity with the aesthetics and poetics of the machine, which was becoming popular with the general public at the time.
One of Le Corbusier’s favorite chairs was the Armchair 209, which the Swiss architect used so frequently that it became known as the Le Corbusier Chair. Le Corbusier used it in some of his most famous settings: the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion and the celebrated 1929 Salon d’Automne, alongside his group of furniture designed in collaboration with Perriand and Jeanneret.
Thonet Tubular Metal Chairs
In 1927, at the Weissenhof Exhibition in Stuttgart, also known as The Dwelling, a particular type of furniture caught the public’s and Thonet’s attention—tubular metal furniture.
The tubular metal chairs, designed by avant-garde architects such as Mart Stam, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand, were perfectly suited for Thonet production. They featured essential shapes and were made with industrial materials that were ideal for mass production. Additionally, their aesthetics perfectly matched the machine age that dominated the 1920s, allowing Thonet to stay at the forefront of design trends.
These brand-new “machines for sitting” appeared in the catalog in 1929. The success was such that by the 1930s, Thonet had become synonymous with tubular metal furniture.
CHAIR S33 BY MART STAM, 1926
The first tubular metal chair was created by Mart Stam, who presented it at Weissenhof in 1927. It was a cantilever chair made of tubular metal, a design that had never been seen before. Although it was only a prototype, the novelty of this chair was immense, and it undoubtedly inspired the projects of Mies van der Rohe discussed below, as well as those of Marcel Breuer. However, Breuer did not acknowledge his Dutch colleague and even claimed credit for inventing the cantilever chair (legend has it that it was the result of a moment of inspiration during a Bauhaus party). It took many years and a court case to establish that the intellectual rights belonged to Stam.
Chair S 533 by Mies van der Rohe, 1927
In 1927, after seeing Mart Stam’s cantilever chair, Mies van der Rohe also decided to experiment with tubular metal. The result was a series of chairs, still produced by Thonet today, featuring curved legs and leather upholstery. The simplicity of the design, the limited choice of materials, and the transparency of the furniture embody the elegance and rigorous logic that characterizes all of Mies’s work.
Chair S32 by Marcel Breuer, 1929/30
The S32 chair, also known as the Cesca chair, is one of the most famous chairs in design history. It was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1929 and has recently experienced a significant revival. The chair goes by various names due to its long history and the fact that it is produced by both Thonet and Knoll. At Thonet, it is called the S32 chair without armrests, or S34 if it has them. Over the years, Thonet has developed a very interesting collection around this chair, including outdoor seating and armchairs. When produced by Knoll, it is called Cesca—in honor of Marcel Breuer’s stepdaughter Francesca.
Armchair S35 by Marcel Breuer, 1929
This armchair was first presented at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1930. Marcel Breuer showcased the contribution of the Werkbund (a German government agency dedicated to promoting design) with this tubular steel cantilever armchair, which has become a design classic over the years, much like the Cesca chair and many other projects by the German architect.
Chaise Longue à Réglage Continu by Le Corbusier, 1929
In the early days of its history, in 1929, Le Corbusier’s famous Chaise Longue was produced by Thonet, who called it model B306. The issue with the renowned design by Le Corbusier, Perriand, and Jeanneret was probably its lack of adaptability to the various markets where Thonet could sell it—it was popular only in France. Additionally, the famous chaise longue was very expensive. It was a sales failure, and from 1933 onwards, Thonet no longer included it in their catalogs. Despite the initial failure, history has reserved a place of great prestige for the chaise longue. Today, the Chaise Longue is produced by Cassina as part of the iMaestri collection, along with other furniture by Corbu and his associates that were initially produced by Thonet, such as the LC1 Fauteuil à Dossier Basculant and the famous LC2 Fauteuil Grand Confort.
Thonet Production TODAY
As we have seen, over the past two centuries, Thonet has achieved what no one before them had ever dreamed of. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, they were already mass-producing chairs and furniture and creating one of the first businesses to operate internationally.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Thonet employed around 6,000 people and produced 4,000 pieces of furniture per day. These were extraordinary results for the time, earning them a place in the history of European design.
Today, Thonet is divided into several companies, one based in Vienna, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, and one based in Germany, Thonet. Thonet continues to produce the classics of the past but has also created new, interesting collections with contemporary designers—remaining one of the most important players in both classic and contemporary design.
Sources
To write this article, we consulted:
- Renato De Fusco, Storia del Design
- Christopher Wilk, Thonet: 150 Years of Furniture
