The world-famous bentwood furniture maker Thonet is still a family-owned enterprise even today, currently operated in the Hessian town of Frankenberg in the fifth generation. The story began with cabinetmaker Michael Thonet from the Rhineland, who developed the bentwood technique in the early years of the 19th century and was then summoned to Vienna by Prince Metternich, where he made his first industrially produced furniture. His chairs were easy to take apart and transport and inaugurated modern mass production in this field. His famous coffee house chair No. 14 alone was sold more than 30 million times by the Second World War. Thonet had this model to thank for the fact that it was already a multinational enterprise by 1900. The industrial aesthetic plus minimalism, including a sparing use of materials, were the distinguishing features of the first tubular steel chairs from the 1920s, a uniquely German innovation that revolutionized the world of furniture design and with which the Thonet name is likewise closely associated. The S 43, the first cantilevered chair by Mart Stam, the B 32 (today S 32) by Marcel Breuer and the MR 10 (today S 533) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe are all still produced today. After 1945, when many factories lay in ruin, part of the family remained in Vienna (today Thonet Vienna) and the rest carried on the tradition in West Germany. Tubular steel and wood for a long time remained the dominant materials. Every decade gave birth to its own set of classics as the company continued to rely on collaboration with prominent designers: from Eddie Harlis, who in the 1950s designed the optimistic S 664, to Pop designer Verner Panton, all the way to contemporary international stars such as Norman Foster or Alfredo Häberli, but also including numerous Germans like Ulrich Böhme, Gerd Lange, Glen Oliver Löw, Peter Maly, Wolfgang C. R. Mezger und Wulf Schneider. Accents were set with the technically sophisticated S 360 chair (2001 by Delphin Design) as well as with the S 4000 upholstered furniture program (2001 by Jehs + Laub) and the A 660 easychair by James Irvine, which brought the bentwood technique up to date using aluminium and net webbing.