Michael Thonet

Thonet's No. 14 café chair of 1859 is the prototype of flat-pack furniture: six pieces of steam-bent beech, ten screws and two nuts, shipped 36 to a crate and assembled at the café. Bending solid wood in iron moulds let semi-skilled factory workers produce it at scale, and tens of millions were made. Practically, it is light, strong, stackable in a pinch and easy to repair, though its narrow round seat suits a coffee more than a long dinner. Thonet's sons ran the factories in Moravia that made it the café chair of Europe.