Chair No. 14
Six pieces of wood, ten screws and two nuts. The chair could be shipped in parts, and more than 50 million have been made.
No joint is carved – everything is bent.
Michael Thonet was a German cabinetmaker, born in 1796 in Boppard on the Rhine. He experimented with bending wood using steam and heat and patented his methods. In 1842 he moved to Vienna, where he set up his business. His sons later ran the firm Gebrüder Thonet. Chair No. 14 was launched in 1859 and became the company’s most successful product. Before Thonet, chairs were often made of many carved and glued parts, which required skilled joiners and a great deal of labour.
The chair consists of six pieces of bent beechwood: a back piece that continues into the rear legs, two front legs, a seat ring, an inner back loop and a ring that holds the legs together. They are assembled with ten screws and two nuts. The seat was often of woven cane. There are no carved details and no glued joints bearing the structure.
The form is light and elegant. The curved line of the backrest runs down into the rear legs. The legs are angled slightly outwards for stability. The chair looks simple but is carefully balanced to be both comfortable and durable. It was also cheap and easy to move.
In the bending process the wood was first heated with steam until it became pliable. It was then bent around metal moulds and left to dry in shape. Thonet developed a technique in which a metal strap was fixed along the wood to keep it from splitting. This made it possible to bend solid wood into large curves.
The chair was one of the first pieces of furniture to be produced industrially on a large scale. It could be shipped in parts, and many chairs fitted into a small crate. It was assembled on site, often by the buyer. This allowed it to be exported all over the world to cafés, restaurants and homes.
The chair was a great success and won prizes at world’s fairs. It became the emblem of the Viennese café. Modern architecture embraced it, and the architect Le Corbusier used Thonet chairs in his buildings and praised their simplicity. The chair showed that mass production could be combined with good design. When Thonet’s patent expired in the 1860s, many other firms began making similar chairs, and bentwood furniture became common throughout Europe. The chair is often called the café chair or the Vienna chair.
By 1930 more than 50 million had been made, and the chair is still in production. It is regarded as one of the most successful pieces of furniture in history. It is in the collections of many design museums, including the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, and has inspired many later designers.