Michael Thonet No. 14 Chair Case Study

The No.14 Chair made by German-born cabinetmaker Michael Thonet is one of the most bestselling consumer products of the nineteenth century (Doick, 2009). It was the world's first industrially produced bent-wood chair and the first mass produced chair (Doick, 2009). First introduced in 1859, the No.14 Chair is regarded as an iconic product, “which although no one has ever actually done the math, is thought to have seated more people than any other chair in history” (Rawsthorn, 2008). The No.14 Chair inspired a revolution in social and industrial life from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century (Keulemans, 2016, p. 354) and set new standards that are still relevant today.

Thonet No.14 Chair design and technology
The No.14 Chair is a wooden dining chair, with a caned seat, made up of only six pieces of stained
Its design led the way for the Art Nouveau style, which widely used organic and curved shapes (Meadmore, 1979). The No.14 Chair demonstrated the concept of extreme interrelation between production procedure and shape, that became the main idea of classical modernism at the end of nineteenth century (Ngo, Preiffer, 2003, p. 25).
In some cases, it may be arguable that mass production influences furniture and interior design fields in the best way. However, with the approach first used for the No.14 Chair production stylish furniture became affordable and is not associated with luxury anym¬¬ore. It is hard to imagine our life today without unassembled flat-packed furniture, which is now taken for granted by furniture manufacturers.
Thonet's bentwood technology used for the No.14 Chair was fundamental for the establishment of numerous chairs we own and appreciate today. Exhibited in museums and described in multiple books all over the world, Thonet No.14 Chair became a cultural symbol which is simply too good to sit