Interiors: Hooked on classics
It is 150 years since the family-run firm Thonet first manufactured its iconic bentwood chair. To celebrate, the company is re-launching simplified versions of some of its most successful designs at affordable prices. Thonet’s bentwood chairs are so familiar and friendly, it comes as a shock to discover the technical innovation and history behind them. The grandaddy of them all, Chair No 14 (today known as 214), looks more at home in a 20th-century cafe than a Victorian parlour, but was actually first produced commercially in 1859. Brahms and Lenin both used it. And they weren’t alone. It proved an immediate and continuing hit, so much so that by 1930 some 50 million of them had been sold around the world. Made of only six components glued together (with no screws or nails), it is one of the world’s first mass-produced chairs, and is still being manufactured today. The man who devised it, Michael Thonet (1796-1871), was a brilliant furniture-maker from Boppard on the Rhine. Trained as
It is 150 years since the family-run firm Thonet first manufactured its iconic bentwood chair. To celebrate, the company is re-launching simplified versions of some of its most successful designs at affordable prices. Thonet’s bentwood chairs are so familiar and friendly, it comes as a shock to discover the technical innovation and history behind them. The grandaddy of them all, Chair No 14 (today known as 214), looks more at home in a 20th-century cafe than a Victorian parlour, but was actually first produced commercially in 1859. Brahms and Lenin both used it. And they weren’t alone. It prov
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