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 pair of gold chairs is certainly a treasure!! This is an outstanding pair of Streamlined reversed cantilever chairs by Sutton Bridge. They are comprised of a tubular chrome reversed cantilever frame with a 1-inch stability leg on the base for extra support and are upholstered in a beautiful golden faux leather or vinyl on a round foam seat. They have Sutton Bridge tags under the seat, but they are also very similar to styles by Gilbert Rohde, Wolfgang Hoffman, Warren McArthur, and Kem Weber for Lloyd’s Manufacturing. Categorized in many design styles; Art Deco, Machine Age, Streamline Modern, Art Moderne, and Bauhaus, these awesome chairs will fit in just about any style home. They would be wonderful at a breakfast nook in the kitchen or side chairs in your living room. They would be perfect on each end of a chess table or in a sitting room on both sides of an accent table. We absolutely LOVE this pair of gold reversed cantilever chairs and are sure that you do too…you need make them yours!! Price: $2,995 WOW!!!! What a GORGEOUS Tomato Red Streamline Modern cantilever chair!!!! Attributed to Kem Weber for Lloyd’s Manufacturing and categorized in many design styles; Art Deco, Machine Age, Streamline Modern, Art Moderne, and Bauhaus. Too many awesome styles to choose just one… So, you pick!! This chair is comprised of a tubular chrome cantilever frame and is upholstered in a bright and beautiful red vinyl faux leather that demands attention. This piece has no tag or markings but is done in the style of the era’s greats: Gilbert Rohde, Wolfgang Hoffman, Warren McArthur, Donald Desky, Alfons Bach, Gilbert Rhode, Marcel Breuer, and from online searches attributed to Kem Weber for Lloyd’s Manufacturing. It doesn’t get much better than that!! You could use this fabulous chair in your living room, bedroom, sitting room, or kitchen. It would be a wonderful chair at a vanity or a stylish place to sit to take off your shoes in the entry way. The possibilities are truly endless. Kem Weber (1889-1963) was a German-born architect and furniture designer. His birth name was Karl Emanuel Martin Weber but in 1914, he changed his first name to a less German sounding, ‘Kem’ when he became stranded in the USA after the outbreak of the First World War. Kem Architecture was part of the West Coast Modernist movement in America. His designs included many projects and products in Streamline Modern, a form of Art Deco design and architecture that was extremely popular in the USA and Europe in the 1930s. This style emphasized curved forms and long horizontal lines; it was the epitome of sophistication and modernity in that era. Streamline Modern was used for everything from stainless steel cocktail shakers to high powered steam locomotives. Weber designed a lounge chair and other pieces for the Lloyd Manufacturing Company in 1930. Weber worked very successfully with many types of companies using Streamline Modern and utilized different materials in his designs. Weber’s most famous work is probably the “Airline” chair of 1934. Although it was practical, stylish, and economical to construct and ship, the Airline chair failed to find a volume manufacturer, and most surviving examples come from the batch of 300 made for the Walt Disney Studios. Weber was hired by Walt Disney in 1938 to be the chief architect of the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. In his day, German American designer Kem Weber was one of the country’s most renowned designers. Just make this fun and fabulous chair yours and use it wherever and however your heart desires! Price: $1,995 The perfect pair! And ironically, we came across the carafes separate from the warmers…and they fit exactly. The carafes of course are Chemex designed in 1941 by Peter Schlumbohm. One is a 6-cup capacity and the other an 8 cup. Their classic hourglass shape with wood collar and leather ties are absolutely beautiful in their simplicity.