Chaplin Chair Commissioned by Le Corbusier, Poland, 1950s

Born in Switzerland in 1887 as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, Le Corbusier was an architect, urban planner, painter, writer, designer, and theorist who lived and worked primarily in France. In 1900, he began to study at the École d'Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, as an engraver and goldsmith, expanding his studies in 1904 to include architecture. Among his influential early teachers were Auguste Perret, Jose Hoffman, and architect Peter Behrens. During World War I, Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La Chaux-de-Fonds. After the war, he returned to Paris and worked on concrete structures for the government while focusing most of his energy on painting.

In 1919, Le Corbusier and painter Amédée Ozenfant—cofounders of the Purism movement—launched the art magazine L’Esprit Nouveau (the Le Corbusier pseudonym was officially adopted in its first issue). The magazine presented Le Corbusier’s ideas on modern architecture, which were based on a philosophy of harmony and proportion. In 1922, he and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret opened a studio in Paris, a partnership that lasted until 1940. The pair began to experiment with furniture design after architect Charlotte Perriand joined the studio in 1928. In his design, architecture, and artwork, Le Corbusier embraced elemental geometric forms. In 1943, he developed Modulor, a system of proportions based on the male figure and the golden ratio, which was used to determine the proportions of units in architecture and technology. This also served as the basis for his furniture design.

After World War II, Le Corbusier sought efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the housing crisis. His most notable housing unit was the Unité d'Habitation of Marseilles (1946–52). He was also a founding member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). During the 1950s, he was presented the unique opportunity to translate his vision on a large scale with the construction of the newly founded capital city of Chandigarh, India.

A leading 20^th-century modern architect, Le Corbusier pioneered the International style, working primarily with steel and reinforced concrete. His buildings were constructed across central Europe, India, and Russia, and one each in North and South America. Arguably, his most notable works are the Weissenhof Settlement in Stuttgart (1927) and Villa Savoye (1929–31). In 1961, he was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal and the AIA Gold Medal. In 1964, Milan’s Cassina S.p.A. acquired exclusive worldwide rights to manufacture his furniture designs.

Le Corbusier died in August 1965.

Thonet—the oldest surviving furniture company in the world—began its long life in 1819, when cabinetmaker Michael Thonet (1796-1871) established a furniture workshop in Boppard, Germany. A proponent of the Biedermeier style, he specialized in chairs, tables, and storage pieces characterized by clean lines, reduced ornamentation, and an emphasis on functionalist principles. By the 1830s, Thonet’s experiments in laminated and steam-bent wood furniture, like his famous Boppard Chair (1836), brought international acclaim. Thonet’s designs achieved a combination of lightness, durability, and comfort unknown in European furniture at the time.

A great fan of his work, Prince Metternich of Austria invited Thonet to present his designs to the Viennese court in 1842. Finding so much support there, Thonet opened a new company in Vienna in 1849. In 1853, he transferred his company to his sons, and Gebrüder Thonet was established.

Through the second half of the 19th century, Gebrüder Thonet designs grew increasingly popular with the cultural vanguard, especially among progressive design thinkers and tastemakers. One design in particular, the No. 14 Café Chair (ca. 1859), led the way to international success: the chair’s innovative bending technique was well suited to industrial production, and its rationalized, easily assembled structure allowed for efficient packing and shipping. In 1850, Anna Daum famously outfitted her fashionable Viennese café with No. 14 Chairs, and by the 1870s, Gebrüder Thonet had sales offices across Europe and the US. To date, more than 50 million No. 14 Chairs have been sold worldwide–not counting the untold pirated copies.

Iconic pieces from the traditional Gebrüder Thonet collection include Rocking Chair No. 1 (1860), No. 14 Café Chair (ca. 1859), Adolf Loos’s Café Museum Chair (1899), No. 209 Armchair (ca. 1900), Otto Wagner’s No. 247 Postal Savings Bank Chair (1904), and Josef Hoffmann’s No. 811 (1925). In the early years of the 20th century, Gebrüder Thonet also began producing designs in bent tubular steel by Bauhaus masters like Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Mart Stam.

In the aftermath of World War II, Thonet lost all of its production facilities in Eastern Europe, and the sales office at Vienna’s Stephansplatz had been destroyed. Between 1945 and 1953, Georg Thonet, the great-grandson of company founder Michael Thonet, led the rebuilding. Economic success returned quickly. In the ensuing decades, the company commissioned designs from many outstanding designers, such as Verner Panton, Pierre Paulin, Norman Foster, James Irvine, Piero Lissoni, and Stefan Diez. Classic Thonet pieces can be found in museum collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou and Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

In 1976 Thonet was divided into two separate German and Austrian companies, which remain independent of each other. Today, Thonet GmbH is headquartered in Frankenberg, Germany and continues to manufacture the original, bentwood and tubular steel designs alongside new pieces by contemporary, international architects and designers. Originally opened in 1861 by Thonet himself, the furniture factory TON (Továrna Ohýbaného Nábytku), which is located in what is known today as the Czech Republic, continues to manufacture Thonet designs. 

* All images courtesy of Thonet.de