The Austrian workshop that bent wood into permanence.

Thonet was founded by Michael Thonet in 1819 in Boppard, Germany. It became one of the most significant furniture manufacturers in history — not through spectacle, but through a single, radical idea: that wood, subjected to steam and pressure, could be bent into forms that neither carving nor joinery could achieve.

The bentwood process was precise and repeatable. Beech rods steamed until pliable, bent around iron moulds, fixed into curves that held their geometry permanently. The result was furniture of extraordinary lightness and structural integrity — chairs that weighed almost nothing and lasted generations.

The No. 14 chair — later known as the Vienna Café Chair — became one of the most produced objects in history. Six components. Ten screws. Cane seat. A circle of bent beech that defined the café, the bistro, the brasserie. It did not need to announce itself. It simply worked.

Thonet understood that the most enduring design is the one that asks nothing of the room. The bentwood coat rack, the café armchair, the rocker — each one resolved. Steam, pressure, cane, and time.

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.