I recently gave a client’s bentwood dining chairs a quick tune up. Bentwood objects are those made by wetting wood (either by soaking or by steaming), then bending it and letting it harden into curved shapes and patterns. In furniture making this method is often used in the production of rocking chairs, cafe chairs, and other light furniture.
The Origin of the Bentwood or Thonet Chair is often attributed to Michael Thonet who was born in 1796. However, there are records of that style of furniture a couple of hundred years earlier. He was for the first thirty years of his life was basically a cabinet maker. However, by the mid-1830's he had perfected a process of making furniture out of a combination of bent and glued wooden slats. He, if you like, was probably one of the first mass producers of furniture.
There are many different types of wood that can be used to make bentwood furniture, although ash and beech are generally the best because they can bend easily and do not crack like other, harder woods tend to do under the process. Today, bentwood chairs are found in millions of homes, businesses and facilities and have never really gone out of style.
There have been a number of famous people who have owned Bentwood chairs, from world leaders to painters to scientists and more;
Joseph Stalin
Albert Einstein
Pablo Picasso and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec
In fact, Lautrec’s work, “At the Moulin Rouge” you can actually see two Bentwood chairs in the painting. Of course, there have been many other people who have owned Bentwood chairs which makes them a rather iconic symbol of our times.
Another interesting fact is that of the 80+ million Bentwood chairs that have been sold since their first creation, more than half of the sales occurred before 1930. While this particular type of chair is still highly popular, other types of chair designs have weaved their way into the general public. This means that the chair itself is not quite as popular as it once was, but it still holds a powerful place in our culture.
While Thonet himself used glue when he first started creating the chairs, there is no glue or binding compound used today. Interestingly enough, Thonet actually purchased a glue factory so that he would have a steady supply for his chairs, only to see the very first one in 1856 that didn’t require any glue. Known as “No 1”, the chair did not require any glue at all which left Thonet with a factory that he did not need.
The famed No 14 chair only required a couple of nuts and screws to put the six pieces together. It was so simple that many people purchased the chair while still in pieces and then put it together themselves. A simple set of instructions was sent along with the chair, although it is not known if a certain company in Sweden got the idea for their business from this particular chair or not.
Despite more than 80 million Bentwood chairs having been produced, not two are exactly alike because they are made from different sets of timber so they are each unique even if they look much alike. In fact, if you put any two of the chairs next to each other, you’ll be able to spot the differences in the grain and other aspects as well.
There is little doubt that bentwood or Thonet chairs changed the furniture industry and today are still some of the most popular ever made.
