Chair No. 14

Michael Thonet was an Austrian furniture designer and manufacturer who pioneered the industrial production of bentwood chairs in the 19th century. Working in Vienna from the 1830s onward, he developed a technique for steam-bending solid wood into curved forms, which enabled mass manufacture at an unprecedented scale. His No. 14 chair, produced from the 1850s, became one of the most widely manufactured furniture designs in history. Thonet's innovation fundamentally altered the relationship between craft, industrialization, and domestic furnishing, establishing a model of democratic design that influenced modernist practice throughout the 20th century.