The name perhaps says little to us, with that number placed behind a brand that we are also familiar with. And yet, Thonet No. 14 is a iconic design objectwhich made the history of conviviality in Italy. La famous coffee chair was the mother of all coffee chairs.
Born in Austria in the second half of the 1800s, in Bopparda small Prussian town where a cabinetmaker lived, Michael Thonetthe creator of the successful 'invention', was the inevitable companion of the first expressions of conviviality in the bars and cafés of the time. Thonet dreamed of designing a chair that could be mass-produced and sold at an affordable price. He succeeded, after years of technical experiments, with this chair launched in 1859. In 1929, the prestigious Austrian newspaper, 'Die Form', reported that the average daily production amounted to 18,000 chairs and to this day, No. 14 is still in continuous production.
It was made using a technology that was emerging at the time, which used steam to soften and bend the wood as needed. It seems that thecabinetmaker He noticed that damp strips of wood, laid in such a way as to assume a curved shape, retained their curvature permanently if they dried slowly next to a heat source. The year was 1830. Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Metternichto whom the cabinetmaker had sent one of his bentwood rockers, asked Michael Thonet to move to Vienna, where he received recognition for his new wood bending technique and was awarded the title of Carpenter of the Royal Household.
His first assignment was the creation of chairs for the palace of Liechtenstein and for Schwarzenberg Palace. Meanwhile, the Thonet No. 14 chair had already won everyone over. It was the favourite chair of Brahms and Leninof Tolstoy and Renoir, of Marilyn Monroe and Liza Minnelli, and was even celebrated by painting.
The former model No. 14 (now called 214) was a pioneering piece of furniture in several respects: long before globalisation, a product had been created that was available in almost every part of the world; moreover, innovative in terms of packaging, No. 14 was delivered to customers disassembled into its individual parts in a 'space-saving' package from the early years.
Still today, due to its essential line, its production innovation linked to the curvature of wood, the coherent and rational aesthetic language and lightness and transparency combined with incredible strength, the 214 is in continuous production, as it should be for the star of the Design Icons.
