Thonet Bentwood Chairs: A Timeless Design Classic
At Pickle Design, where I work, we have a real appreciation of design classics. Those pieces of iconic design that transcend trends and are just, well, beautiful. They inspire countless generations of creatives and, as it turns out, our calendars too. For our 2025 poster calendar we focussed on 12 design classics, illustrated in minimal detail with pure white. You can see the finished Design Classics Calendar here. We also explored chair design in an earlier calendar.
The calendar theme reminded me of the newsletters we produced a few years back, celebrating iconic pieces of design, including the Thonet coat stand. We had one, if not an original then certainly closely inspired by one, in our hallway growing up. I think I took it for granted, slinging my coat on its wonderfully curvaceous hooks. But having taken the time to understand the process more, I thought I would share a little about Thonet on the blog.
The classic Thonet design most of us are familiar with is the bentwood chair, perhaps synonymous with European cafés and, later, Art Nouveau interiors. Michael Thonet was a German-Austrian cabinetmaker who famously worked out how to bend solid wood with steam to create beautiful, shapely forms. His work caught the eye of Prince Metternich and took him to Vienna, although the road to recognition wasn't easy.
His family business struggled to get Thonet's chairs noticed, but the method he developed eventually allowed this elegant furniture to be mass-produced, ensuring global success. By 1912 the company was manufacturing around 1.8 million pieces a year. Previously, furniture was labour-intensive, heavy and carved, whereas bentwood chairs were lightweight, economical to make and readily available.
That makes Thonet especially interesting because the chairs sit at a turning point in design history. Standardised parts, division of labour and industrial production helped move furniture away from traditional craft manufacture towards mass production, and Thonet is now regarded as a pioneer of industrial design. The economy of material and manufacture also anticipated ideas that would later become central to Modernism.
The bentwood chair actually predates Art Nouveau, but those flowing curves later sat very naturally within the interiors and café culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna. That connection feels particularly lovely now, as we returned to Thonet for our 2026 Art Nouveau calendar, this time illustrating the bentwood chair itself.
The V&A has a great article about Thonet that's worth reading. The company still exists today, creating elegant timeless designs that are as beautiful now as they were then.
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