The manufacture of Thonet chairs

In times of robots and computer-controlled machines, photographs and shots from the beech wood bending shop can remind you of a live museum. However, even the best machine cannot cope with the ingenious invention of Michael Thonet, who was born on July 2, 1796, exactly 213 years ago.

Bending a piece of steamed solid wood at an angle of as many as 180°, which is attached to a mold by clamps and steel flanges prevent the wood from cracking (while bending pressure does not affect surface of the wood but a place under the steel flange) – a job that human hands can only manage. In addition, these hands are strong and very skilled due to long-time experience.

“Nobody has ever constructed and will never construct a machine that would do this job. It is impossible. We have modern equipment for frequency bending but even this is not capable of a ´3D´-bend,” Jan Barton, production director of the company TON, explains. Human hands, eyes and experience will simply remain irreplaceable.

“Wood reacts unequally in summer and winter; the material has to be carefully selected in advance. Depending on the quality of wood, we adjust time in the steaming box, where the temperature exceeds 100° Celsius; it can be one but also four hours,” adds Alois Sevela, head of the bending shop.

The experienced workers of the bending shop, who gain work experience for a number of months, then represent a guarantee that no mistake occurs. They do the physically demanding job in pairs, whereas 150 years ago even 3-worker groups did the same job. The reason is that heavy molds have been replaced by new molds from light alloy.

“The wood bending is a unique profession, in Austria the last such worker quitted 3 years ago,” says Milan Dostalik, sales director of company TON (the letter “h” is not absent due to Czech language, TON is an abbreviation of “bentwood furniture factory” in Czech and it carries on the tradition of company Thonet).

Despite certain changes, workers in the bending shop sweat their guts out; their energy expenditure is enormous. Instead of beer, as someone could think, they indulge a “doping” of ion drinks. During a shift they must fill up five or six carts each carrying 40 to 70 pieces hold in molds; this way they “mature” for 24 hours. Only then, the chairs will be finished and sanded.

The famous chair no. 14 (as per catalogue numbering) is considered the first chair that has been designed for mass production within the furniture-making history. Nevertheless, it has been a symbol of timeless design up to this day.

What is more, it celebrates significant age because its production began already in 1859. So far some 80 million pieces have been produced; it was already about 50 million by 1930.

Unbreakable chair

Why is the no. 14 that important? Using today’s terminology: Michael Thonet was at the right place in the right time. He introduced a timeless design at a reasonable price, easily disassembled and with its low weight perfect for transportation; he very well accomplished marketing and logistics. Moving to Moravia he got close to wood and saved money on transportation; to safe money on duty he built factories in Poland and Russia.

The company gradually gained confidence of “celebrities” of that time who let themselves paint, photograph or signed important documents sitting on the chairs. Thonet chairs became important properties of famous films.

Need an evidence for the above statements? The chair no. 14 has minimal material and assembly demands, it is light (weighs some 3.5 kg), it is constructed of 6 pieces and 10 screws only, and therefore can be imported disassembled. Thus mainly to the U.S.A. it was exported knocked down to pieces; 36 pieces of the no. 14 could fit in a container of 1 cubic meter of volume.

“These days, for example, Japanese customers import the chairs assembled only. Although they squander money on “air” in the containers, they respect the original handwork to such an extent that they do not mind. What is more, they finally got to understand that they have to come to terms with slight divergences as every chair is an original as a matter of fact,” Milan Dostalik explains.

It is almost indestructible too. “The wood fibres are not cut and that is why you can neither destroy nor break the chair,” explains Milan Dostalik. Michael Thonet chose quite harsh marketing method, even compared to recent methods, to test its indestructibility – they reportedly threw the chair down the Eiffel Tower during the world exhibition in Paris. In Paris it was awarder the gold medal, its durability could play a role as well.

Some people claim that this story is not true, that he only threw the chair out through a window of his office in anger (and nothing happened to it). However, this experience could have inspired him to some other throws too. At all events, Charles Chaplin loved the no. 14 and the comedy pair Laurel and Hardy used it as a throwing weapon with a lot of enthusiasm.

One thing did harm to the chair, the marketing at socialistic times. “In an effort to gain valuable foreign currency they sold the chair for six dollars and a return to real value has been difficult,” Milan Dostalik describes. He adds that original cane seat took 6-8 hours of work and we have already mentioned the hard bending job.

Inspiration for artists

What about celebrities? Just look at the paintings and interiors of such big names as Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Renoir or Salvador Dali. The Thonet chairs are everywhere; both no. 14 and no. 18, coming from 1867 that is upon the heels of its younger colleague, speaking nothing of the rocking chair.

“Recently we produce no. 18 more often that no. 14,” claims Milan Dostalik. Nowadays the company offers 250 models with some 40 thousand modifications, classical Thonet chairs represent one third of this number.

Architects have always admired them. Le Corbusier, who company Thonet co-operated with, may be an author of one of the most famous armchairs of this brand and what is important, he kept using the Thonet chairs in his interiors (for example in pavilion L'Esprit Nouveau in 1925).

The world famous architect Adolf Loos, who hated decorativism, also “bowed down” to no. 14. It is also the youngest generation of designers, e.g. Erwan Bouroullec (he works a lot for Vitra), that only praises the chair: “Gentle harmony of shapes, created by the innovative method of wood bending, made this chair a timeless classic.”

We can even claim that it is the bent beech wood that became an inspiration for designers who in the 20´s and 30´s of the last century introduced furniture frame which consisted of bent metal tubes.

The above-mentioned Le Corbusier but also Marcel Breuer, Miese van der Rohe and others – all of them only developed the idea of Michael Thonet. The functional, simple but at the same time elegant and durable furniture produced at reasonable prices.