Hardwood Magazine Racks and Stands

Elegant Art Nouveau magazine holder, or music stand, on outwardly curved feet with inset wooden panels. High-quality handcrafted furniture with decorative bentwood elements that comb...

A wonderful and rare Thonet Vienna Art Nouveau Bentwood Canterbury, circa 1910 in date. This model was created before the year 1904 by the Austrian Manufactory Thonet Brothers. It features five beech wooden struttings which are amazingly bent in the finest Thonet manner. Bibliography: Illustrated Catalogue of Michael Thonet, Vienna 1904, page 87, Condition: In really excellent condition, please see photos for confirmation. Dimensions in cm: Height 55 x Width 42 x Depth 51 Dimensions in inches: Height 1 foot, 10 inches x Width 1 foot, 4 inches x Depth 1 foot, 8 inches Michael Thonet (2 July 1796, Boppard – 3 March 1871, Vienna) was a German-Austrian cabinet maker, known for the invention of bentwood furniture. Thonet was the son of the master tanner Franz Anton Thonet of Boppard. Following a carpenter's apprenticeship, Thonet set himself up as an independent cabinetmaker in 1819. A year later, he married Anna Grahs, with whom he had seven sons and six daughters. Only five of the sons, however, survived early childhood. In the 1830s, Thonet began trying to make furniture out of glued and bent wooden slats. His first success was the Bopparder Schichtholzstuhl (Boppard layerwood chair) in 1836. Thonet gained substantial independence by acquiring the Michelsmühle, the glue factory that made the glue for this process, in 1837. However, his attempts to patent the technology failed in Germany as well as in Great Britain, France and Russia Thonet's essential breakthrough was his success in having light, strong wood bent into curved, graceful shapes by forming the wood in hot steam. This enabled him to design entirely novel, elegant, lightweight, durable and comfortable furniture, which appealed strongly to fashion – a complete departure from the heavy, carved designs of the past – and whose aesthetic and functional appeal remains to this day. At the Koblenz trade fair of 1841, Thonet met Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, who was enthusiastic about Thonet's furniture and invited him to the Vienna court. In the next year, Thonet was able to present his furniture, and his chairs in particular, to the Imperial Family. As the Boppard establishment got into financial difficulties, Thonet sold it and emigrated to Vienna with his family. There, he worked with his sons on the interior decoration of the Stadtpalais Liechtenstein for the Carl Leistler establishment. In 1849, he again opened his own shop together with his four sons. A few years later, in 1853, he transferred the company to his sons under the name Gebrüder Thonet. In 1850 he produced his Nr. 1 chair. The Great Exhibition in London 1851 saw him receive the bronze medal for his Vienna bentwood chairs. This was his international breakthrough. At the next World's Fair, Exposition Universelle in Paris 1855, he was awarded the silver medal as he continued to improve his production methods. In 1856 he was able to open up a new factory in Korycany, Moravia. The 1859 chair Nr. 14 – better known as Konsumstuhl Nr. 14, coffee shop chair no. 14 – is still called the "chair of chairs" with some 50 million produced and still in production today. The innovative bending technique allowed for the industrial production of a chair for the first time ever. What was revolutionary about the former no.14, which is today's no. 214, was the fact that it could be disassembled into a few components and thus produced in work-sharing processes. The chair could be exported to all nations of the world in simple, space saving packages: 36 disassembled chairs could fit into a one cubic meter box. It yielded a gold medal for Thonet's enterprise at the 1867 Paris World's Fair. At the time, the chair no. 14 cleared the way for Thonet to become a global company. Numerous pieces of bentwood furniture followed. Some models also became icons of design history: the rocking chair no. 1 from 1860, later on in the 19th century the successful models no. 18 and no. 56, around 1900 the elegant no. 209 with its curved armrests, which Le Corbusier adored, and in 1904 the art nouveau armchair 247 by Otto Wagner, the so-called postal savings bank chair...

Thonet Vienna most elegant music, newspaper and magazine rack High quality handwork, stunningly shaped bentwood, superb appearance Beech wood, dark mahogany stained, shellac han...

An elegant, neoclassical style magazine rack with its original ivory color paint and patina. This piece is made of beech wood. The caning is original as well and in beautiful conditi...