Running Chairs 
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The furnishing concept of the palaces in 
Vienna in the first half of the 19th Century also 
included the so-called “running chairs," which 
complemented the representative furniture as 
light occasional furniture when needed and 
which were constantly rearranged. Such light 
and thus rather inexpensive seating furniture 
was made by Michael Thonet for the Liech 
tenstein, Schwarzenberg, and possibly also 
Pälffy Palais. However, Thonet's first attempt 
to create a chair in the style of his Boppard 
chairs, but adapted to the taste of metro- 
politan Vienna was not really successful: The 
principle of the side frame chair can be seen 
here only in the base frame, because for the 
first time the crest rail and the rear Stiles 
should be one single continuous component. 
This required a three-dimensional bend, which 
could be made only as an independent ele- 
ment and then had to be mounted on the 
lower part. Although the problem could be 
mastered technically, the chair itself was still 
too much rooted in the Biedermeier form 
canon and could not convince in terms of 
form. It was finally with the chairs designed 
by the English architect Peter Hubert Des- 
vignes for the Palais Liechtenstein-including 
the model with a heart-shaped medallion in 
the back shown here’-that Michael Thonet 
was able to aesthetically exploit the bending 
technique he had developed. In comparison, 
the chairs by Carl Leistier, who had been en- 
trusted with all the woodwork for the Palais 
Liechtenstein, and whose workshop Thonet 
was using at that time for doing his own work, 
were also executed using templates by Des- 
vignes but still look rather crude: They show 
“how Desvignes’ traditional Rococo models 
[...] are put into a new, fashionably renewed 
dress.” 2 
1 A comparable model can also be found in the Danhauser furniture 
designs. See Musterkatalog der Danhauser'schen Möbelfabrik in 
Wien, Vienna, no year, No. 96. 
2 Michael Huey, Peter Hubert Desvignes und die Neo-Rokoko- 
Gestaltung des Stadtpalais Liechtenstein 1837-1849, Vienna 
1999, 238. 
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