Thonet

Gebrüder Thonet is a European furniture manufacturer based in the German town of Frankenberg, Hesse. It was founded by Michael Thonet. It merged with Mundus in 1922.

The company was established in 1819 by Michael Thonet to produce his own designs, using the then new bentwood process, which he developed. Within a short period of time it became a major furniture manufacturer with a global distribution network. In the 1930's a major expansion took place with the addition of tubular steel furniture from famous Bauhaus associated designers such as Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe.

Thonet were particularly known for their manufacture of bentwood furniture, for which they had developed the first industrial-scale production processes. These replaced previous individual craft skills with an investment in machinery that allowed any worker to produce accurate and repeatable bent components. Although steam bending was long established for pieces such as the Windsor chair, these older pieces had used the bending of a raw billet that would then be shaped to size afterwards. Thonet's more precise process allowed timber to be machined with a surface finish as raw stock (usually as thick circular dowel), steam bent to shape, then used as a component almost immediately, without further machining other than to trim the ends.