Bertoia's Diamond Chair and Thonet's Chair No. 14

Ever since I was a little girl, I have always been fascinated by chair designs.

My very own white and yellow striped beach chaise longue

The first chair that I fell in love with was my white and yellow striped beach chaise longue. It looked almost like this:

...but mine had white wood instead of brown with white and yellow stripes.

Bertoia's Diamond Chair

Then I fell in love with the diamond chair that my grandparents had in their summer house in Istanbul, Turkey.

(Our chairs had orange cushions.)

My grandparents had these super cool looking white chairs made of wires in their kitchen. If you were a type of person who thought that the glass was half empty rather than half full, you could have thought that these chairs were made of air. When I asked my grandpa why he picked those chairs for the kitchen, he (who was a very famous and successful professional architect and building contractor in Turkey) said those chairs were designed by a very famous designer called Harry Bertoia and the style was called The Diamond Chair. Because I was too little and had no idea what a “commercial product” meant, I used to think that Bertoia designed those chairs just for us and we had them right in our kitchen. :)

(My grandpa, on a cruise to Europe, in front of his college, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, in Istanbul, Turkey.)

The Chair of the Chairs: “The Chair No. 14”

The third chair which really fascinates me is Michael Thonet’s bentwood chair: The Chair No. 14.

I won’t lie…it took me quite some time to really like this chair because (with all due respect) I used think that this chair design looked so old and boring. However, as I started to read about the history about this chair, I got more and more fascinated by it. And when I saw Thonet’s “The Chair No. 14” in VERSACE for HM commercial, I thought I should write about this chair design.

Thonet’s first bentwood chair, Chair No. 1., was released in 1850. It was a great breakthrough from the traditional furniture making methods because back in the days, furniture was made of heavy materials with carved designs of the past.

With Thonet’s Bentwood chairs, the world was introduced to the concepts of: simple yet sophisticated, modern, elegant, lightweight, economical/affordable, practical, and durable.

Nine years after the first bentwood chair design, Michael Thonet designed The Chair No. 14, better known as Konsumstuhl Nr. 14, using a unique steam-bending process. Also known as the bistro chair, The Chair No. 14 was designed as a response to a requirement for café-style chairs.

It was made of six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws, and two nuts. Later chairs were made of eight pieces of wood: two diagonal braces were added between the seat and back, to strengthen this hard-worked joint.

Chair No. 14, today known as 214, is still manufactured by the Gebrüder Thonet Company (managed by the 5th generation of Thonets) and is one of the world's most successful commercial products.

Here are some of the new 214 classic bentwood styles with some twists...literally:

Chair No. 14 was also popular with artists such as Auguste Renoir and Toulouse Lautrec.

(Toulouse Lautrec, featuring a Thonet chair in his painting.)

And now Chair No. 14 is featured in another artistic media tool, a video, directed by Johan Renck for Versace for H&M:

I am sure there are many other unique and fascinating chair designs out there but these are my favorite ones which I was introduced at some point in my life.

What are your most favorite chairs?