Michael Thonet (1796-1871) and his
five children were the most success-
ful manufacturers of furniture in the
Industrial Age. Having been invited
to develop a patent in Austria by
Chancellor Metternich, who had seen
his products at the Exhibition held by
the society of friends of arts in Koblenz,
in 1842, Michael Thonet left Boppard
in Germany, to settle in Vienna, where
in 1853 he founded the company
“Gebrüder Thonet” by involving his five
sons. In the Hapsburg capital, Michael
Thonet abandoned the more tradi-
tional technique of glued lamellar wood
in favour of the industrial chemical -
mechanical steam bent process. This
innovation led him to begin producing
wooden furniture, presenting a collec-
tion of elegant, yet practical designs that
could be manufactured on a larger scale.
He immediately supported this with a
distribution and sales network that was
capable of penetrating any market. It
was during this time that products such
as chair No. 1 designed for the famous
Viennese Palais Schwarzenberg made
their début, gaining fame as ‘typically’
Thonet, and from which many other
models were then designed, up to and
including the classic chair No. 14. The
company’s use of high technology and
production techniques, together with
widespread fame and a growing repu-
tation, encouraged the most important
Viennese architects to design new prod-
ucts. Otto Wagner commissioned the
furnishing of the Post Sparkasse. Adolf
Loos designed the chair for the Café
Museum, in 1895 writing: “When I was in
America, I realised that the Thonet chair
was the most modern seating available”.
In 1911, the Gebrüder Thonet catalogue
boasted 980 different models. By the
end of the second world war, independ-
ent production plants had been set up in
various different countries and devel-
oped into separate businesses.
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HISTORY
