This No. 14 Chair by the Thonet brothers played an outstanding role in the history of modern furniture design. Also known as the “three-guilder chair,” it’s one of the most frequently produced items of seating furniture in the world, and possibly one of the most successful industrial products ever. It exemplifies the ascent of the Thonet company to become one of industry’s earliest global players. Michael Thonet had been perfecting the bentwood process since around 1830, and developed it into one of the first industrial production methods. His method of bending solid wooden parts under steam and pressure enabled the individual components required for a piece of furniture to be manufactured independently of each other, sometimes in different places. Thonet thus managed to produce inexpensive furniture in large quantities at the lowest possible cost. What’s more, the chairs were easy to transport because the parts could be exported and then assembled, greatly simplifying international distribution. This example, which was acquired by Die Neue Sammlung in 2010, is one of six precious original models of the No. 14 Chair. It was initially owned by the House of Hanover. Unlike the chairs in the series which from 1861 onwards were made entirely of solid wood, this chair dating from around 1856 still consists of plywood. It thus testifies to the fact that Thonet spent several years developing what was later to become a bestseller – a chair whose reduced form also hinted stylistically at modernity.