GoKawiilDedicated to the individuals and families that welcomed me into their factories and their towns.
I hope I have done them justice in my endeavor to capture the psuchē of the German Mittelstand.1
To Bielefeld, I’m glad I can confirm that the city does indeed exist.
Chairs and the Czech Republic
There is a chair you will find at cafés across Europe—and perhaps have even sat in—called Chair Nr. 14. This “coffee shop chair” became the first mass-produced piece of furniture and was invented by Michael Thonet, a German carpenter. But before number fourteen, Thonet introduced the Boppard chair, and with it, a novel technique: wood bending. By softening solid wood with heat and steam, he could coax it into curves impossible to carve by hand, and then let the wood set permanently into its new shape.
This advancement allowed furniture to progress from an era of primitive aesthetics to a modern level of sophistication that caught the eye of a more affluent clientele. At the Koblenz trade fair of 1841, Austrian Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, upon seeing Thonet’s work, invited Michael to Vienna to present his chairs to the Imperial Family.
At the behest of the Austrian court, Michael relocated to Vienna and opened a shop with his sons—Franz, Michael Jr., August, Josef, and Jakob—under the name Gebrüder Thonet. There, alongside decorating the Stadtpalais Liechtenstein, he continued refining his art, receiving the silver medal at the 1855 World’s Fair in Paris for his Vienna bentwood chairs. Then, in 1859, he unveiled Konsumstuhl Nr. 14.
What was revolutionary about Nr. 14 was that its design made it the first truly manufacturable chair. Its construction allowed it to be disassembled into just a few components, simplifying packaging and enabling export around the world. After earning the gold medal at the 1867 Paris World’s Fair and claiming its throne as the “chair of chairs,” the Konsumstuhl became the standard for European restaurants and cafés.
(1) The Boppard chair (2) The Stadtpalais Liechtenstein (3) Side by side: the Vienna bentwood and Chair Nr. 14 - an icon of 19th and early 20th century cafés, it is still produced to this day
Soon after the breakout international success, demand for Thonet furniture surged, and as ownership shifted from Michael to his sons, they looked to scale fabrication. Offering expansive beech forests, a substantial skilled workforce, and lying in a location favorable for logistics, they selected Bystřice pod Hostýnem, in Moravia—what is today the eastern Czech Republic—to be the flagship manufacturing site.
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