Thonet Style High Stool in Curved Wood, 20th Century

Thonet opened his own cabinetmaking workshop in 1819, but it was in the early 1840s that he began experimenting with folding and gluing wooden sticks. Thus, in 1841, the first piece of furniture to use the technique of bent wood was born: the Boppard Chair. During an exhibition at the Koblenz Fair (1841), the Chancellor of Vienna discovered Thonet’s work and convinced him to move to Vienna with his family. Thus, between 1843 and 1846, Thonet and his sons designed a parquet floor for Carl Leistler, and furnished the Liechtenstein Palace and the Schwarzenberg Palace. The company will be renamed Gebrüder Thonet (Thonet Brothers) in 1853, in honor of Thonet’s five sons, who will inherit the company. In 1859, Thonet created Chair No. 14, a model known worldwide as the Viennese Coffeehouse Chair. Thanks to this design, Thonet has developed its wood bending process in order to adapt it to mass production. Sold over 50 million copies in 1930, the No. 14 is the best-selling chair in the world. During the 1860s, Gebrüder Thonet expanded and opened subsidiaries across Europe. Some of the company’s classic designs include Chair No. 04 for Café Daum (1849), Rocking Chair No. 1 (1860), No. 18 (1876), No. 209 (1900’s) and the 247 by Otto Wagner (1904). A source of inspiration for many designers, Thonet was able to influence Le Corbusier, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, Yngve Ekström, Otto Wagner and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. His innovation therefore allowed the creation of elegant, light and curvilinear designs, anticipating the minimalist forms of modernism. When Thonet died (1871), Gebrüder Thonet already had branches in many of the major cities of Europe. Today the company is known as Thonet GmbH and is headquartered in Frankenberg, Germany.