White Dining ChairGreen Dining ChairsParsons Dining TableBentwood DiningDining AreaKitchen DiningWhite TableDining SpacesDining TableForwardThis is the home of Amber Creswell Bell and family, in Turramurra on Sydney’s North Shore.POÄNG - 40 years of comfort and style Living proof of timeless design. POÄNG armchair is turning 40 this year. So come and celebrate four decades of comfort and style along with us. POÄNG now has one new frame and six new covers to add to the existing range of combinations. Classic Scandinavian design doesn’t always have to originate in Scandinavia. This iconic armchair was actually the creation of Japanese designer Noboru Nakamura. There are literally dozens of possible combinations to choose from. The choice is yours. The chair follows the shape of the body and supports the neck and lower back. POÄNG has the classic lines of a chair that can fit in any home. It’s an almost universal armchair.Learn more about our warranty
Chances are, you’ve sat in one of his chairs before. You can tell them by their signature bentwood frame, which produces a sturdy yet lightweight piece of furniture. Fans of Michael Thonet’s work appreciate its ability to be simple and beautiful at the same time. That his chairs, though nearly two hundred years old, have never gone out of style is a testament to his genius as both a designer and an entrepreneur.Thonet (pronounced “toe-net”) was born in the German city of Boppard in 1796. He scored an early apprenticeship with a cabinetmaker, and never left the trade. Eventually, he opened up his own shop and began to experiment with new carpentry methods to bend wood, namely that of using heat and laminate to manipulate material. The process entailed cutting thin strips of wood, boiling and joining them in adhesive, and setting them in molds where they took their shape.Some cabinetmakers in the likes of Boston and Brussels had also been making furniture with bentwood at the time, though they worked largely independent of each other.
Though he was not a lone wolf, Thonet’s furniture struck many as novel and impressive, and he arguably took the technology further than any of his contemporaries. A big break came at an 1841 craft fair, when the chancellor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Klemens von Metternich, invited this intrepid designer to his country estate to show him samples of his work. Enthusiastic about what he saw, he invited Thonet to Vienna. Soon after, the up-and-coming designer gained a small reputation among the elite, sold some furniture to the Emperor, and crucially, acquired a patent to protect his proprietary process.In the 17th and 18th centuries, the best and most respected furniture designers owed their prosperity to the upper ranks of society. Thomas Chippendale, for example, filled English country houses and city estates with his work, and advised his wealthy clients on matters of interior decoration. Thonet indeed gained the favor of the wealthy and powerful, and made some exquisite pieces that only they could afford.
And though this played a decisive role in his success, Thonet set his sights on an even larger market. His bentwood seats, which managed to be strong, yet lighter and simpler than a traditional carved chair, promised to be inexpensive, mass-producible pieces of furniture for the likes of cafés, restaurants, and hotels.He opened a workshop in Vienna, and sold chairs and coatracks to the booming cafés in the city. (By the early 20th century, when the great café eras had come to Vienna and Paris, Thonet’s chairs had become associated with the idealized mood and aesthetic of the urban café, and remain so today.) His company had found its flagship product — the durable and attractive № 14 chair, whose simple construction managed to be at once graceful and utilitarian, relying on subtle curves and long, bent dowel that formed both the backrest and rear legs. Thonet began to build a global business and brand, naming it Gebrüder Thonet (Thonet Brothers), and sold his chairs far beyond the confines of the continent.
It was when Thonet began shipping furniture for orders in South America that he came upon a skillful technological solution. The laminate that held his bentwood chairs together was prone to deterioration when sent on the humid voyage over tropical seas. The key was to devise a way to bend solid wood, which he had attempted before, but at the time failed to prevent the material from splitting. He kept at the problem: The solution came from a judicious use of clamps and mold fittings, relieving pressure along the dowel’s most vulnerable parts. This method, too, earned him a strategic patent, giving Gebrüder Thonet thirteen years of protection for the process.Like another furniture empire to follow a century later, IKEA, Michael Thonet and his company made an art of shipping and packaging. His most popular chairs were made to transport easily (36 chairs could fit a cubic-meter box) and were to be put together by the customer on site. “Assembly was simple,” writes architecture professor Witold Rybczynski in a book about the history of the chair, “the six pieces of a №14 chair required only ten screws and two washers (the hardware was manufactured by Thonet, too).”
Here, we get a deeper sense of Thonet’s business philosophy as well.Thonet had two workshops and 100 employees in Vienna, but even these facilities couldn’t keep up with demand. Gebrüder Thonet embarked on its mission to replace workshops with factories, starting with a desire to secure a superior supply of raw materials. So far, the company made its chairs from tropical woods like mahogany, but in the forests of Moravia, Thonet and company noted an abundance of Copper beech, which could hold up to their steaming and bending techniques.The company built five factories near beech forests in what are now the Czech Republic and Romania. Crucially, they did not require much skilled labor. The sites relied on local men and women to steam, bend, mold, and sand the material — no sophisticated mortise-and-tenon joining or carving required. The company’s factory in Koritschan, employing 300 workers, was able to produce 50,000 chairs a year.Like the industrialists who would follow in the coming five decades, Thonet enjoyed significant influence over nearly all parts of the production process.