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Magazine
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A Unique Chair MakerThe carpenter and furniture designer Michael Thonet (1796-1871) initially made furniture in his hometown of Boppard in Germany's Ruhr region. He became an innovator and promoter of the then unknown technique of making furniture using wood bent in a steam bath or boiling liquids. When his products received a bronze medal at the World Exposition in London in 1851, Michael Thonet began to consider the possibility of moving from making limited editions to large-scale factory production. The firm of the Brothers Thonet set up their first factory in 1857 in the Moravian town of Koryčany, which was surround by large beech forests. This was followed by additional factories in the eastern Moravian towns of Bystřice pod Hostýnem and Vsetín, the latter of which is the home of the fame chair number 14. For more than 150 years, this chair has been a part of many Czech households, evidence of the exceptional durability over time of Thonet products. The Brothers Thonet enjoyed enormous commercial success (not only with chair no. 14) and by 1871 had established branches in many of the world's leading cities. They were also famous for their original entrepreneurial approach; in the town of Bystřice pod Hostýnem they invested sizeable sums of money into the improvement of the city, supported the construction of family houses with small gardens for their employees, established a local hospital and a primary school as well as a "factory" school from which they recruited future furniture workers. Many models designed by Art Nouveau architects from this period have survived and even the famed architect Le Corbusier placed Thon chairs in his building's interiors. After the First World War, the firm Thonet was succeeded by the joint-stock company Thonet-Mundus, followed in 1946 by the nationalized firm Thonet, later shortened to TON, with its headquarters in Bystřice pod Hostýnem. The factory here has been running continuously for more than a century. A key turning point in the history of the company occurred in 1994 with the establishment of the joint-stock company TON. The focus now shifted towards exports to advanced industrialized countries and to changing and expanding the assortment of products manufactured by TON. Today factories in Bystřice pod Hostýnem and nearby Holešov manufacture more than 1.5 million chairs annually, two-thirds of which are exported across the globe, in particular to the countries of the European Union, Japan and the United States; the remaining one-third of the production is sold on the domestic market. In spite of the fact that chairs make up 95% of the company's production, TON also manufactures armchairs, tables, bar stools and coat racks. Some chairs have been manufactured under the same designation (014, 016 and 018) for more than a century, while others look towards modern design trends or the requirements of reliability and simplicity found in the furnishing of gastronomic establishments. TON furniture made by its special order unit can be found in Prague's National Theater and Theater of the Estates. TON has been exporting to Japan for more than thirty years but breaking into the Japanese market was not at all easy. The Japanese customer is exceptionally focused on quality, demands perfection in the manufacturing process and is even quite critical of a product's packaging. Today, the firm of TON enjoys great success with its classic models. These models are however modified in terms of size: the height of the seat on chairs destined for the Japanese market is three centimeters lower than it is on regular production models. At the present time TON works with eighteen commercial partners, with only a small part of exports destined for home use. The majority of exports are destined for hotels and restaurants. Editors |
