Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'thonet'.
Found 1 result
-
Interesting post by Paul Sellers, cut and paste here for those that don't do YouTube Seems like IKEA before IKEA Michael Thonet gave us the first mass-produced piece of furniture in his No 14 Bistro chair. He first announced it as a production model in 1859 and 50 million were sold between then and 1930. In terms of weight-to-strength ratio, this chair has known no equal. Its weight is about half that of 95% of any other chair and it's this that makes the chair so iconic as 'the cafe' chair. So I sit on my Thonet in Blackwell's bookshop here in Oxford now to write knowing that not a single woodworking joint was used and that the designer relied on minimising the need of any kind of skilled work staff. The parts simply bolt and screw together and a single chair is made in under ten minutes of human labour time. Some designs are worth celebrating. This is the one I would choose as the ultimate mass-made chair design and, yes, I find it to be a wonderful work chair. I can lean back in it, sit forward, scoot it, rock on it and even stand on it if I want to. The greatest savings in the chair were in warehouse storage and distribution as they could be sent out unassembled and required only ten screws and two nuts and bolts to be installed by unskilled staff. This is not the #14 type but the #14 is still being made today by Grebruder Thonet in Vienna. Thonet originally had his factory in a part of what was Austria and is now known as Moravia.
