History:
Thonet was a
skilled German craftsman whom discovered the limitation of bending wood and
creating an interesting composition, the strengths of his furniture making was
that certain features such as the exploration at that time of the technical
properties of wood is what lead him to great success and aesthetically pleasing
design.
https://www.google.com.mt/search?q=Thonet&rlz=1C1CHBD_enMT705MT705&biw=1536&bih=748&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipj__pz8LSAhUnKcAKHf1nD6AQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=b4ZYTD5Lw2vL6M:
From woodworking shop to industrial
production:
Thonet was
first experimenting with bending plywood and creating designs with the same
material. The year 1841 was an important year for Thornet were he first
exhibited his work at Koblenz, this exhibition was a great success were he catches
the eye of people which eventually he was asked to relocate his workshop in
Vienna. Thonet had a breakthrough in 1859 were he designed chair no.14, it was
at the same time that due to the exploration and fundamental achievement by
Thonet lead to the possibility to mass produce the bending technique. In
reality what lead the well-known chair no14 to such importance? It was a
successful to the ability dissembling the design into few components, this lead
to the ability of ‘work-sharing processes. The ability to export this design to
any country at that time was fascinating and saving a lot of material and
packaging it is said that about 36 chairs could be dismantled and fit in an
area of 1 cubic metre. Some designing that today we see revolutionary followed
in the Thonet’s footsteps such as the rocking chair (1860), Thonet no.209 the
chair that was produced at the break of the century (1900).
This kind of
technique and production of certain models such as shown above helped inspire
the art Nouveau era at a later stage, which inspired artist such as Le
Corbusier. The peak of Thonet’s company was at 1912, two(2) million different
design productions were sold worldwide.
A new material: One of the most important materials
at that time was Tubular steel, in the 1930’s the same company was one of the
world’s biggest producer in tubular steel in furniture design, this helped a
lot of big names in design at that era.
The most
iconic and eye catching design after the discovery of tubular steel was the cantilever
chair that caught the eye by the tubular steel frame that was a one continuous
piece of design. This design is defined as one of the most important designs in
the 20th century designed by Marcel Breuer. At the end of the 1920’s
Thonet taught of an entirely new fabrication technique, he opted for removing
new material and started producing tubular steel in his facility. Due to this
idea tubular steel took a new form and dimension with the ability of Thonet’s
commitment to distribute and expand this material worldwide.
Thornet’s product’s today: After the WWII the same Thonet lost
a major part of his production facilities, After his son rebuilt the lost
facilities in Europe the company quickly regained the success thanks to their
outstanding designers within the company and the company’s structure.
Bibliography:
http://en.thonet.de/fileadmin/media/meta/presse/Basispressemappe/Thonet_Basispressemappe_Nov_2013_EN.pdf
History - thonet. 2017. History - thonet.
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.thonet.com.au/history/.
[Accessed 06 March 2017].
No comments:
Post a Comment