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Much like a fine wine or the Mona Lisa, some things just get better with age…much like this classic oak bentwood & cane Josef Hoffman Prague 811 armchair by Stendig for Thonet! Talk about the ability to withstand the hands of time!! This Josef Hoffman chair was designed in 1925 but remains a current and fabulous design today. It is comprised of a gorgeous bentwood oak and cane frame, slender rounded arms, and slightly flared legs. Can’t you just imagine it behind your home office desk or at the vanity in your bedroom? Want to add a little splash of Bauhaus style to your living room? We have the perfect side or accent chair for that!! You can be sure it will complement your home with timeless and historical excellence, whatever your style!! Josef Hoffman was one of Austria’s most important architects and designers and was central to the development of art and design in Vienna. He grew up with three sisters and was nicknamed Pepo. His father was the town mayor and a successful businessman. He was a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a radical anti- historicist movement, and together with Koloman Moser created the Wiener Werkstatte cooperative workshop. A highly individualistic architect and designer, Hoffmann’s work combined the simplicity of craft production with a refined aesthetic ornament. Between 1901 and 1905, he designed four villas in Vienna and a sanatorium in Brussels that was called “Stoclet House”, for which he developed a “cubistic” language of form, with an emphasis on straight, unadorned lines. In 1905, he established the Kunstschau with painter Gustav Klimt and, two years later, founded the Deutscher Werkbund. Hoffmann worked well into his 80s, continuing to use the geometric motifs that influenced the art deco style of the 1920s. In 1928 his work appeared in the Art in Industry exhibition held at Macy’s in New York City, where it exerted a strong influence on American designer Donald Deskey. Hoffmann is one of the seminal figures in the modern decorative arts movement of the first half of the 20th century. Stendig was totally the brainchild and passion of Charles W. Stendig. You cannot write or talk about Stendig without explaining Charles. He was a pioneer of import goods in the mid- century. After serving in WWII as a paratrooper, he studied business with emphasis on international trade at NYU and City College of New York. Afterward first working for Raymor, another pioneering distribution company, for about two years, departing to start his own business: Stendig. He opened his first showroom in 1956 in midtown Manhattan. He is credited for sparking America’s interest in furniture from Finland, Switzerland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. He imported from the likes of Thonet, Asko, and De Sede; and from iconic designers including Le Corbusier, Josef Hoffmann, Eero Aarnio, Tapio Wirkkala, Marcel Breuer, Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi, Carlo Mollino, Carlo Scarpa, and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni to name just a few. By the late 1960’s, Stendig had showrooms in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco with a large headquarters in NYC. They were exciting and good times but short lived. The business was a challenge and when an offer was made by Burlington Industries to purchase, Charles agreed. He stayed on till 1976 to oversee and then retired. I have searched the internet to no avail to find out if a Stendig division is still in operation. But I can only find the Stendig Calendar, the only calendar in MoMA’s collection, which was designed for Stendig by Mossimo Vignelli, still offered. But I am having a hard time deciding who is creating and offering it. I do know Burlington Industries was bankrupt by 2001, purchased in 2003, merged with Cone Mills in 2004 and subsequently into ITG or International Textile Group. But the Stendig name reins as an icon of high style mid-century offerings. Thonet was founded by Michael Thonet. Michael was born in 1796 and was apprenticed by his father to a cabinetmaker. Shortly after he married, Michael opened his one-man cabinetmaking shop creating furniture and cabinetry in the traditional manner by carving the needed parts and then joining them together. In 1830 he began experimenting with bending wood into curved shapes and thus began a successful furniture company that has remained continually in operation for nearly 200 years. Thonet’s early work was very Biedermeier in style and not made for the common man. Gradually his designs became more Art Nouveau. In 1951 his chairs for the Crystal Palace at the London World’s Fair won a prize medal and by the late 1950s he began to make his first “consumer” chair. In 1875, a year before Michael’s death, Thonet’s five factories made 620,000 chairs. Then in 1876 after his death the company became Gebruder Thonet. But all was not roses. In 1869 the Thonet patents lapsed and by 1893 there were 52 bentwood companies in Europe. However, Thonet persevered. They branched out. They merged. They added designs by Le Corbusier and Breuer and alternative materials such as tubular chrome in place of bentwood to their offerings. Business boomed and waned through the years and there was even a Thonet revival, so to speak, beginning in the 1940s on into the mid-20th century. Till today, in the 21st century, Thonet is still a furniture company to be reckoned with almost 200 years later. We are in love with this iconic masterpiece designed by Josef Hoffman and if you are too, you need to make it yours! Price: $1,495 This gorgeous set of eight Swiss mid-century modern dining chairs were designed in 1955 by the famed Hans Eichenberger. Called the Saffa chair it was produced by Dietiker in Switzerland and imported and sold in the United States by Stendig. It is purportedly Eichenberger’s favorite piece he created. It is comprised of two chrome-plated steel tubes which are intertwined to form the legs and arms of the chair. These two tubes are cane-wrapped together to form the back of the chair. The seat nests in between the two tubes and is covered in its original black faux leather vinyl. You know that old vinyl that you can’t tell whether it is leather or not. The patina on this set of chairs is phenomenal. You just cannot get the warm look of the cane wrap in a new chair. This set of eight will be incredible around any dining table you may have or find. Hans Eichenbrger was born in 1926 and is a furniture and interior designer based in Herrenschwanden, near Bern. The early 1950s, after training as a carpenter, took him to Paris where he was part of a dynamic cultural milieu that impacted his life and career significantly; and when he returned to Switzerland he began his undeniable impact on 20th century Swiss design history. He collaborated with Trix and Robert Haussmann, Kurt Thut, teo jakob, and Alfred Hablutzel under the name of Swiss Design, as well as Atelier 5. These collaborations and his design projects for Swiss National Bank, the Kunstmuseum Bern, and the SBB are linked to the making of modern Switzerland. His work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, and the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich. He won many awards and influenced designers in multiple generations and is still going strong. Stendig was totally the brainchild and passion of Charles W. Stendig. You cannot write or talk about Stendig without explaining Charles. He was a pioneer of import goods in the mid- century. After serving in WWII as a paratrooper, he studied business with emphasis on international trade at NYU and City College of New York. Afterward first working for Raymor, another pioneering distribution company, for about two years, departing to start his own business: Stendig. He opened his first showroom in 1956 in midtown Manhattan. He is credited for sparking America’s interest in furniture from Finland, Switzerland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. He imported from the likes of Thonet, Asko, and De Sede; and from iconic designers including Le Corbusier, Josef Hoffmann, Eero Aarnio, Tapio Wirkkala, Marcel Breuer, Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi, Carlo Mollino, Carlo Scarpa, and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni to name just a few. By the late 1960’s, Stendig had showrooms in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco with a large headquarters in NYC. They were exciting and good times but short lived. The business was a challenge and when an offer was made by Burlington Industries to purchase, Charles agreed. He stayed on till 1976 to oversee and then retired. I have searched the internet to no avail to find out if a Stendig division is still in operation. But I can only find the Stendig Calendar, the only calendar in MoMA’s collection, which was designed for Stendig by Mossimo Vignelli, still offered. But I am having a hard time deciding who is creating and offering it. I do know Burlington Industries was bankrupt by 2001, purchased in 2003, merged with Cone Mills in 2004 and subsequently into ITG or International Textile Group. But the Stendig name reins as an icon of high style mid-century offerings. To have such a large set of these iconic original mid-century modern chairs is practically unheard of. You must make them yours. Price: $16,995 What an iconic mid-century modern Swiss designed dining table! It is attributed as the brainchild of Hans Eichenberger in the 1960s, produced by Haussmann & Haussmann, and distributed in the U.S.

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