Bentwood chairs were among the classic furnishings of Viennese coffee houses in the late nineteenth century. What Loos had in mind in 1899 when he first began work on the Café Museum situated opposite the Secession on the Karlsplatz in Vienna were the traditional Viennese cafés of the Ringstraße era, whose functional elements he appropriated. The Café Museum Chair designed by Loos (it is the first bentwood model designed by an architect) and manufactured by J. & J. Kohn in fact improved on an existing model and in this respect was fully congruent with the architect’s own theories. The most obvious sources of inspiration were Kohn’s No. 30 and No. 55 chairs, where, unlike in their famous forerunner, Thonet’s No. 14, the inside arch of the backrest is formed from the same length of bentwood as the back legs, while the outer arch ends on either side of the seat frame. The wavy backrest arches can be found in Kohn’s model No. 248. Whereas the bentwood used for all these chairs had a round cross-section, the Café Museum Chair, originally stained in a shade of red, was made out of bentwood with an elliptical cross-section, which created an effect of lightness without any loss of stability.
Text: Eva B. Ottillinger
