Mid2Mod: Gebruder Thonet

Showing posts with label Gebruder Thonet. Show all posts

Saturday, May 14, 2011

I.C.F., Inc.

A few months ago we found an Alvar Aalto Paimio chair on Craigslist. We knew it was a wonderful piece, but we weren't sure how old it was, since the design is still in production by Artek, the Finnish company founded in 1935 by Aalto, his wife Aino, and their friends Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl.

We did some preliminary research on the piece, but we got busy opening the store, and we never followed up. Today a customer emailed, asking for additional information about the chair, so we finally got back to our search. He specifically asked about any labels that might still be intact, and my SIL found one marked I.C.F. that we weren't sure about.

The company is still in business but had no Paimio chairs on their website. Only when we used "Artek" and "I.C.F." as search terms did we get the full picture. It turns out that I.C.F., Inc. was started in 1962 and was the first American company to distribute furniture designed by European architects. They started with Alvar Aalto's designs in 1962. In the 70s they added pieces by Arne Jacobsen. I.C.F. is still the American distributor for Fritz Hansen, Artek, and Thonet, among others, although it appears that they only distributed the Paimio chair from 1962-1986. While that doesn't give us a definitive date, it certainly narrows the time frame.

Our Alvar Aalto "Paimio" chair

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Gilbert Rohde

Gilbert Rohde (1894-1944) was the son of a New York cabinetmaker who became one of the most influential furniture designers of his time. Though not a household name today, he is the designer behind many of the names that we do know today.

In 1923 Rohde turned one of his first job experiences as a political cartoonist into a job illustrating furniture for the Abraham and Strauss department store. He soon turned that talent into furniture design, selling his early work to Lord and Taylor. His style at that time combined the simplicity and rationalism of Bauhaus design with the sense of form and ornamentation of Art Deco, working mainly in Bakelite and chrome.

In 1930 Heywood-Wakefield began using his designs. He had great success with a bentwood chair he designed for the company. In that year, he attracted the attention of Herman Miller, which at that time was on the brink of bankruptcy, because their traditional pieces and historical reproductions were no longer selling. He convinced them that modernism was the way they needed to go, so in a desperate effort to stay in business, they showed his designs for bedroom furniture at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. With their updated image, they stopped producing traditional pieces and began to have Rohde design entire sets of living and dining room furniture. He acted as a design consultant for the company from 1932-1944.

During that time, he designed chrome furniture for the Troy Sunshade Company and also worked for Thonet. His work was exhibited at the MoMA in 1934 and at the New York World's Fair in 1939. He was director of the Design Laboratory in New York from 1935-1938 and was head of the Industrial Design department at the NYU School of Architecture from 1939-1943.

From r20thcentury.com

Heywood Wakefield bentwood chairs
1stdibs.com

Sofa table for Troy Sunshade Company
1stdibs.com

Lounge chair and ottoman for Herman Miller
thisnext.com

Kidney-shaped desk for Herman Miller
1stdibs.com

Lounge chair for Troy Sunshade Company
1stdibs.com

Paldao table for Herman Miller
treadwaygallery.com

Three-seater sofa for Troy Sunshade Company
1stdibs.com

Desk lamp for Mutual-Sunset Lamp Company

treadwaygallery.com

Paldao end tables
1stdibs.com

Coffee table for Troy Sunshade Company
treadwaygallery.com

Sofa bed for Herman Miller
1stdibs.com

Pronunciation Guide

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Thonet...Yes, you heard me. I said TAWN-at.

Thonet is considered a pioneer of furniture design throughout the world. The company was established in 1819 by Michael Thonet to produce his own designs. In 1830 he began to experiment with bending steamed wood to create furniture, and by 1855 Gebruder Thonet received a patent for the bentwood process. Within a short period of time, the company 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 designers such as Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe. In the 1950s, designers such as Jindrich Halabala, Eero Saarinen and Joe Atkinson designed pieces for the company.

Today, in addition to manufacturing many of the tubular steel and bentwood classics, Thonet continues to introduce products by renowned contemporary architects and designers. The family enterprise is managed by the fifth generation of Thonets: Claus, Peter and Philipp. Corporate headquarters and the production facility is in Frankenberg, Germany.

An interesting aside: In researching this post, I found that I, along with many other people, have been mistaking the German name for French and, as a result, have been mispronouncing the name of the company. As a follow-up to a thread on Apartment Therapy, a reader named Harley emailed the Thonet company and received a response from family member Anke Thonet, who said the correct pronunciation rhymes with LAWN-at and has a silent h, giving the beginning and ending t a hard sound. So tonight I’ll stand in front of the mirror before I go to bed repeating “TAWN-at, TAWN-at, TAWN-at” till I break the habit of saying "Tho-NAY." (I’d like you to think I’m so suave and sophisticated that I never mispronounce a designer’s name, but, alas, that’s not the case. Why doesn’t someone compile a pronunciation guide???)

From thonet.de, stylenorth.ca and apartmenttherapy.com