A café chair is a light, armless chair designed for cafés, restaurants and bistros, where seating needed to be inexpensive, comfortable, easy to move and able to withstand constant use. The name is most closely associated with the bentwood chair developed by Michael Thonet in Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century, though it is also used for simple metal and wooden bistro chairs.
Thonet's breakthrough was to steam and bend solid lengths of beech into curved frames, allowing chairs to be made from only a handful of parts, held together with screws and shipped flat for assembly. His Model No. 14 chair, introduced in 1859, became one of the most widely produced chairs in history and furnished coffee houses across Europe and beyond. Other makers, including J. & J. Kohn and Fischel, produced similar designs, and French bistros also used painted iron and folding wooden chairs. Antique café chairs are popular today for kitchens, dining areas and garden rooms. When buying, look for maker's labels or stamps under the seat, sound joints, and original cane or pressed plywood seats in good condition.
