Stand
attributed to Michael Thonet (1796-1871)
Category
Furniture
Date
1900 - 1905
Materials
Bentwood - beech
Measurements
200 x 69 cm
Place of origin
Austria
Order this imageCollection
Felbrigg, Norfolk
NT 1398627
Summary
A beech bentwood 'coat tree - coat rack number 1', probably Austrian, circa 1905 in the manner of Michael Thonet (1796-1871) With eight double S hooks at the top held by a turned cluster column and a stich rest below continuing to down swept legs. Michael Thonet (1796–1871) was born in Boppard am Rhein, Prussia, and trained as a traditional cabinet-maker. In the 1830s, as an alternative to the laborious technique of carving, he began bending wood to create furniture. In 1855 Thonet made a key technological breakthrough. After years of bending laminated wood, he discovered that by attaching a metal strip along its length, solid wood could be bent in a similar way. This eliminated the costly lamination process and earned patents guaranteeing a virtual monopoly on production. In 1857 Thonet built a new factory in Koritschan in the Moravian forests (in what was then Austro-Hungary) with a ready supply of beech wood, plenty of cheap labour and access to important rail links. The firm went on to mass-produce ‘bentwood’ furniture in unprecedented numbers, manufacturing up to 1.8 million pieces a year by 1912.
Provenance
Part of the Windham Collection. The hall and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust in 1969 by Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969)
Makers and roles
attributed to Michael Thonet (1796-1871), furniture maker