History

Thonet

The company was founded in Vienna in 1819 by Michaël Thonet who transferred the company « Thonet » to his sons under the new name « Gebrüder Thonet » in 1853.

From 1856, the brothers invested in furniture factories in Czechia, Slovakia and Poland (6 production centers are thus created in Europe). Following the Second World War, Thonet lost all its production facilities in the Eastern European states through expropriation, as well as its sales office in Vienna.

In the years 1945-1953, Georg Thonet, the great-grandson of the company founder, rebuilt the facilities in Germany, in Hesse, where the headquarters and production facilities of the Thonet GmbH company are maintained until Today.

Economic success quickly returned after the war, the company sought the collaboration of exceptional designers. The list of designers who have worked with Thonet over the past 60 years is long and full of leading names: Egon Eiermann, Verner Panton, Eddie Harlis, Hanno von Gustedt, Rudolf Glatzel, Pierre Paulin….

Gebrüder Thonet is particularly known for the manufacture of bentwood furniture for which it developed the first production processes on an industrial scale. Thonet’s more precise process allows wood to be machined to a raw surface finish (usually in the form of a large circular dowel), steam-bent, and then used almost immediately as a component, with no further machining other than cutting the ends. Their best-known piece is Chair No. 14, an emblematic chair of Parisian cafes.

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