The Viennese émigré who gave American modernism its most enduring rattan form.

Paul Frankl was born in Vienna in 1886. He trained in architecture and design across Europe before emigrating to the United States in 1914. What followed was a career that helped define American modernism — first through his celebrated Skyscraper furniture of the 1920s, then through a body of rattan work that remains among the most resolved of the twentieth century.

The pretzel chair — and its companion sofa — is Frankl at his most assured. Rattan bent into sweeping arched forms, the circular detail at each side giving the piece its name and its character. The frame is structural and sculptural in equal measure. Nothing is decorative for its own sake. The arch holds. The circle anchors. The cushion sits within the geometry as if it could not be placed anywhere else.

Frankl understood rattan not as a tropical novelty but as a serious material — one capable of holding complex form without losing warmth. His pieces were designed for California living: open rooms, natural light, the easy movement between inside and out. They did not perform leisure. They simply enabled it.

The pretzel suite — sofa and armchair — is one of the great rattan sets of the American mid-century. Found together, in original condition, it is impossible to forget.

Rattanology is a UK design studio based in Oxford, partnering with master craftspeople around the world to create premium rattan lighting and furniture with intention and integrity.