Colour concept for a design icon

At the occasion of the company’s 200th anniversary of Thonet, the designer duo Eva Marguerre and Marcel Besau created the famous Coffee House Chair 214 in four contemporary two-tone colour versions: in black, white, velvet red and sage. In this version, the connecting elements of the chair are stained several shades lighter than the seat ring and legs. The play of colours attracts the eye to the minimalistic construction and, at the same time, transports its classic silhouette into a contemporary context. The natural look of the stains creates a translucent effect and the contemporary interpretation of classic colours creates a modern look.The icon will be available in this version exclusively in 2019.

Six parts, ten screws and two nuts: The design of the Coffee House Chair No. 14 (today 214) can be summed up with this formula. Michael Thonet did not need more in Vienna in 1859 to create this classic of design history. With this icon of modern furniture design, he established an example for what the much-quoted “reduction to the essential” really means, and at the same time established the foundation for serial mass production. Disassembled into its individual parts, 36 chairs could be packed into a shipping crate – and shipped and sold throughout the world.

With their colour concept, Eva Marguerre and Marcel Besau raise awareness of chair 214’s construction. Based loosely on Charles and Ray Eames’ famous quotation “The details are not the details, they make the product”, their play of colours makes the chair’s construction visible. With the assistance of the two-tone concept, the individual parts of the chair become subtly distinct through soft colour nuances. Eva Marguerre and Marcel Besau: “The iconic nature of the chair is emphasized.”

The colour concept of the stains represents a spectrum of rather neutral, discrete shades in combination with nuances of strong character. The versions two-tone white and two-tone black look simple and elegant and fit in with any interior. The two-tone velvet red version wants to bring back the memories of 19th century coffee houses. In the anniversary edition, the classic red is juxtaposed with the fresh nuance of the bright sage green, lending a bright atmosphere to the interior.

Eva Marguerre and Marcel Besau were especially fascinated with the curved shapes of the 214: “For us, the central theme of the Thonet brand are the radii and round shapes of bent wood and tubular steel. We emphasize the shape of the 214, the curve of its backrest, with our colour concept – which creates a graphic effect. We always think in an interdisciplinary way, and we always imagine products in a context. In the case of the 214, we naturally conceived a use in cafés – and this is precisely where we believe this chair still belongs today! The graphic moment plays a role for this purpose: The placement of many chairs in a space creates repetition. This makes the beauty of the backrests graded in the colour nuances visible – and thereby the beauty of the chair itself.” The anniversary edition of the 214 is made of beech wood. The seat is available with stretched wicker cane.