215 R / 215R Bentwood Chair - Coffee House Chair Thonet

Tailwind: 215 R coffee house chair by Thonet

The most successful industrial product in the world - the famous coffee house chair by Thonet is an icon and marks the beginning of modern furniture design. It is based on the technique of bending solid wood, which Michael Thonet tested and perfected at the end of the 1850s. This is how he made the serial production of the chair possible.

Its clear, reduced aesthetics have made this classic chair grow in popularity for more than 150 years and make it the perfect chair for a wide variety of environments. It is produced in Frankenberg and is available in different versions.

Designer Michael Thonet

Michael Thonet was born in 1796 in Boppard on the Rhine, where he also opened his own workshop in 1819, from which the world-famous manufacturer Thonet emerged. The company is still family-owned, now in the 5th generation. Michael Thonet was a master carpenter and is considered a pioneer of modern furniture production and design. At the beginning of his working life, he was intensively involved with the possibilities of bent wood and subsequently also with the economical implementation of late Biedermeier furniture forms in terms of craftsmanship and their industrial use.

Thonet - 200 years of tradition

The Frankenberg-based manufacturer stands for durability and an irrepressible drive for innovation. Thonet was the first manufacturer to bring bentwood furniture onto the market and the first to market tubular steel furniture. Michael Thonet founded his own workshop in Boppard am Rhein in 1819. In the 1830s he experimented with strips of veneer boiled in glue and is therefore regarded as the inventor of "furniture made of bent wood". in 1842, he was invited to Vienna by the Austrian state chancellor Prince Metternich and the coffee house culture there laid the foundation for Thonet's later success. Given this desire for innovation, it is not surprising that Thonet also cultivated links with the Bauhaus and Marcel Breuer. Thus Thonet implemented Breuer's experiments with cold-bent tubular steel and produced the famous cantilever chairs.

Material and format

The coffee house chair is 43 cm wide, 52 cm deep and 84 cm high. The seat height is 46 cm. It is made of bentwood with a seat and back made of wickerwork and a plastic support fabric under the seat wickerwork.

Note on the wickerwork used

The cane wickerwork used is a natural product. This type of wickerwork is manufactured exclusively in the Far East and is delivered to Thonet rolled up in sheets. The cane threads are peeled from the Rotang palm, which grows in East Asia, and glued together. As this is a natural product, the quality and width of the individual threads can vary. Dull-looking areas are, for example, growth rings of the plant. Growth and harvesting conditions also influence the quality of the braid.

The production of furniture by Thonet is carried out with a high level of technical and craftsmanship effort in order to guarantee an appropriate level of quality. For example, every chair with a wicker covering is specially checked again before it leaves the factory.