mundus / thonet / kohn

ted and i took the egyptian disco fabric off the new/old chair and found nothing special (i.e. nothing clean) underneath. we're not even certain that the seat is original. if it is, the chair would seem less old than the manufacturer's mark suggests (pre-1914). covering the wooden base and the horse hair padding was a dirty yellow, texturized, plastic (?) coated upholstery. for the meantime, we just tacked a bit of canvas over it.

but here's all of what we've found out, starting with the maker's mark:














what you see is the name "mundus" stamped inside the rim of the seat. i love the eastern european art deco lettering -- jugendstil, or youth style, if i remember (and guess) correctly. (check out the "d".) i also love the name, mundus. (this is also if i remember correctly, now dredging up dr. howe's old english.) mundus is latin for world, from which we speakers of contemporary english get "mundane," meaning "of this world" -- opposed to the world of the sacred from which come other things, though presumeably not this chair.

as to the company that produced the chair, it was very much of this (well, its) world.

in 1856 the thonet brothers (Gebruder Thonet) patented their process for making bentwood furniture which involved wetting, steaming, and forcing wood into iron casts to dry. they let the patent go in 1869 by which time a number of other companies were already making and improving on the bentwood process (and disputing their patent), most famously the father and son team Jacob and Josef Kohn. in 1914 Kohn merged with Mundus. in 1923 (or 28) Kohn-Mundus merged with Thonet, and the conglomerate company is still making furniture. somewhat like the Bauhaus, and Target, the companies teamed up with famous architects and designers to provide stylish furniture to the middle-class -- we of this world.

because there are no other marks on the chair, i'm guessing it's older than 1914. other people writing in with queries on the web have mentioned dual marks, j. j. kohn and mundus for example, but there's nothing else on ours except "made in poland" (krakow, most likely, where several of these companies had factories). it's possible a paper stamp might have come off, but i found no evidence that one had ever been there.

of all the Austrian bentwood furniture makers of the period, i've found out the least about Mundus. it's only ever referred to as a company that merged with the more recognizable figures in the bentwood story, and that may be because there are no figures associated with Mundus, the "Viennese holding company" and third "largest Austrian manufacture[r] of bentwood furniture" -- no one to fight over processes and patents. some forgotten manager probably just saw a bentwood cafe chair and decided to start making knock-offs at Mundus.

in my little research, though, i haven't found another chair that looks like the one we found in Brattleboro. i did come across a claim that the Thonet chairs fetch higher prices because Thonet is presumed to be the originator of the process.