Thonet-Stahlrohrmöbelkatalog (Steckkartenkatalog) 1930
Thonet tubulär Steel furniture catalog (Stock card catalog) 1930
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«JIAHIKOH« STAHIINIHI
Al l! K E I Al O It E 1
the sale of Standard Möbel to the Gebrüder Thonet AG in 1929 the
production of tubulär Steel furniture started in Frankenberg and the Com
pany, of course, immediately claimed the success for itself: “It is no coin-
cidence that the Thonet Mundus Group was also the first to Champion
modern tubulär Steel furniture and included this branch of industry in its
product ränge at a time when the general public saw this type of furniture
as purely an architect's fancy and was calling it ‘Sanatorium furniture’.
[...] As the industrialization of tubulär Steel furniture production became
increasingly widespread, the Thonet Mundus Group appeared to be the
most important pioneer in this new direction, the popularization of this
trendy furniture was possible in a very short period of time.’’ 27
However, until it was overtaken by Gebrüder Thonet Frankenberg in
around 1930, the largest Company in the (tubulär) Steel furniture sector
was L. & C. Arnold in Schorndorf near Stuttgart: Since 1871 the Company
had already specialized in garden and hospital furniture made of metal
and later also included corresponding products made of tubulär Steel in
its product ränge. The Josef Müller’s “Berliner Metallwerke" [Berlin
Metalworks] was a smaller manufacturer which was the first to produce
tubulär Steel furniture by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, betöre his models
were also manufactured by the Gebrüder Thonet AG in Frankenberg.
Numerous other factories and plants were also established in Switzer-
land, France, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia,
where, on the basis of licensing agreements with Thonet Mundus,
the Company Mücke Melder, founded in Freistadt (now a district of
Karvine) in 1915, was able to establish itself as the largest producer of
tubulär Steel furniture. With the exception of a few of their designs, they
produced almost exclusively models by Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer
in license. 28
In addition to Stam, Breuer, and Mies van der Rohe, there were of course
other designers of tubulär Steel furniture; in Germany, for example, Anton
Lorenz, Kalman Lengyel, Heinz Rasch, and Wassily Luckhardt, after 1930
also Erich Dieckmann and as one of the few Austrians, Ernst Plischke.
In France it was primarily the trio Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and
Charlotte Perriand; under the direction of the aforementioned Bruno Weill,
Thonet Freres also produced models by Emile Guyot, Rene Herbst, and
27 (No author), “Stahlrohrmöbel. Thonet-Möbel seit 100 Jahren modern,” in: Profil, 1 st year, iss. 5, 1933,
177.
28 Other important Companies in Czechoslovakia were Hynek Gottwald in Brandys nad Orlici (Brandeis
an der Adler), UP-Zävody Brno in a specialized facility in Hodonin, Robert Slezäk in Bystrice pod
Hostynem (Bistritz am Hostein) and Jan Vichr in Lysä nad Labern. (Lissa an der Elbe).
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