Original Thonet desk chair, practical and rare. Austria, circa 1870. Made of steam-bent solid beech wood.

Original Thonet desk chair, practical and rare. Austria, circa 1870. Made of steam-bent solid beech wood. Viennese straw seat. Limited series production from the 1870s, much rarer than the later 20th-century ones. In excellent condition, with patina. Original Thonet manufacturer marks and labels. History of the prestigious Thonet manufactory. In the years around 1830, Thonet conducted his experiments with veneer strips softened in boiling glue before inventing "bentwood furniture." In 1842, Prince Metternich, impressed by the talent of the Rhenish cabinetmaker, called him to Vienna. Here, Michael Thonet, with his sons, dedicated himself to creating parquet floors and furniture for the Liechtenstein Palace and the Schwarzenberg Palace. With the creation of chair no. 4 for the Daum café on Vienna's Kohlmarkt, he quickly conquered the Viennese café scene, laying the foundations for the development of the furniture sector intended for the "community," that is, public spaces. With the revolution of 1848, many people lost their jobs and found new employment in Thonet's new factories, where steam engines were in operation. Success came in 1859, when Michael's sons' company, Gebrüder Thonet, presented chair no. 14 in solid bentwood, the famous "Vienna straw chair," now considered one of the icons of design history. The Thonet brothers quickly understood the need to integrate new trends and technical developments into their work, embracing certain embryonic intuitions. From the beginning, they presented their creations at industrial and craft exhibitions of the time. The multilingual catalogs of the Gebrüder Thonet company helped to promote the products abroad, which quickly became bestsellers. Sales branches were established in neighboring countries as well as in more distant ones, eventually developing a distribution network for Thonet furniture worldwide. The development of an innovative technique for bending solid wood (with hot steam), first by boiling the glue, then by humidifying it with steam generated by an autoclave, to then give it the desired curvature in metal molds and make it rigid again by drying it in ovens. This last procedure was then patented in 1842. Michael Thonet died in Vienna in 1871, and the business was continued by his sons. The most valuable original Thonet furniture is that made during the "artisanal and design" phase of the full 19th century. The first models made around the mid-century, first in Boppard, then in Moravia, are reference objects in the history of design and furniture and of museum importance. The production of the last third of the 19th century retains considerable artistic and collectable interest as production was still carefully crafted, limited in number, and with a technique similar to the prototypes. The Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna and the Thonet GmbH museum in Frankenberg, Hesse, possess one of the largest collections of original Thonet chairs. In accordance with the provisions of the New Code of Cultural Heritage, the selling company provides, simultaneously with the sale, detailed written photographic guarantee of the originality and provenance of the sold works. The data with which the works are described and then contained in the written guarantees are expressed determinations resulting from accurate, thorough and documented technical / historical / artistic investigations.