Michael Thonet

Michael Thonet: The Pioneer of Bentwood Furniture

Born in Boppard, Germany in 1796, Michael Thonet began his career as a cabinetmaker before devoting decades to experimenting with ways of bending timber. His breakthrough came through the development of a process for bending solid beech rods using steam, allowing timber to be formed into strong, graceful curves without splitting. This technical innovation would fundamentally change both the appearance and production of furniture.

Thonet understood that bentwood could do more than create curved forms. By reducing furniture to a small number of repeatable components, his designs could be produced efficiently, transported in quantity and assembled with remarkable economy of material. This combination of design and industrial production helped bring well-designed furniture to a much wider audience and established a new model for furniture manufacturing.

Introduced in 1859, the No.14 chair became the defining expression of this thinking. Constructed from just six bentwood components, eight screws and two bolts, its simple form was ideally suited to industrial production. It became one of the most famous chairs in furniture history and established the bentwood café chair as an enduring furniture archetype.

The No.18 chair, introduced in 1876 after Thonet's death and developed by Gebrüder Thonet, continued this bentwood tradition with its distinctive looped backrest. Together, these designs represent a furniture language built around curved timber, economy of material and functional simplicity. Today, the No.14 and No.18 designs and their stool variations remain part of the TON collection available at Huset, continuing a bentwood manufacturing tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century.