Thonet bentwood
Steam-bent beech café chairs, made in Europe.
In the mid-nineteenth century Michael Thonet perfected bending solid beech with steam. The method produced light, strong chairs that could be shipped in parts and assembled anywhere, and the bentwood café chair became one of the most familiar objects in the world.
The pieces shown here (No. 18, Hoffmann, Otto, Lido and the Le Corbusier B9) are still made in Europe in solid beech, in natural, dark oak or black, with ply, cane or upholstered seats.
They have furnished New Zealand cafés and restaurants for more than thirty years, and remain the first choice where seating has to work hard and still look right.
The chair that furnished the café.
In 1842 the Austrian court granted Michael Thonet, a cabinetmaker from Boppard on the Rhine, a privilege to bend wood "by chemical and mechanical means". His method steamed solid beech until it could be bent around iron forms, where it dried and held its shape. Chairs could now be made from a few curved parts instead of many carved and jointed pieces.
Model No. 14, introduced in 1859, was made of six pieces of wood, ten screws and two nuts. Thirty-six of them could be shipped, unassembled, in a box of one cubic metre. Tens of millions had been sold by the early twentieth century. The Viennese café, and most of the cafés that followed it, sat on bentwood.
Six pieces of wood, ten screws and two nuts.
From No. 18 to Le Corbusier.
No. 18, of 1876, added a curved brace to the back. It is a little stronger and more comfortable than No. 14, and it became the standard café chair of the twentieth century. The B9 armchair, with its single bent armrest, was the chair Le Corbusier chose for his Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau in Paris in 1925 and used in his interiors for years after. The Hoffmann chair, model 811, is a 1920s design attributed to the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann, with a cane or upholstered back.
The pieces we supply are made in Poland, in bentwood factories (Fameg in Radomsko and Paged) whose history goes back to the Thonet family's own workshops of the 1880s. They are steam-bent from solid European beech in the traditional way.
Anything from Thonet.
Bentwood was where this business began. We have supplied these chairs to New Zealand cafés and restaurants for more than thirty years. Seats can be ply, cane or upholstered, and barstools can be made to a bench height.
Thonet bentwood · 15 pieces
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