Iconic Chairs and the Designers Behind Them

Michael Thonet, 1859. Made by Thonet as the 214 The Viennese café chair is where the modern mass-produced chair begins. Thonet softened beech by steaming it for hours and bent it into curves, so the original needed only six pieces of wood, ten screws and two nuts. It was also designed to ship in parts and be assembled on arrival, and by 1930 around fifty million had been sold. Spot it by the single hoop that runs from the back legs up into the backrest, with a smaller ring bracing the legs below the seat. Thonet still makes it, now numbered 214.

Gerrit Rietveld, about 1918. Made by Cassina A chair built like a diagram: flat boards for seat and back, held in an open frame of square rails. It turned the De Stijl idea of primary colors and pure planes into something you could sit on. The colors came later. The earliest known example was stained beech with no paint, nobody knows exactly when it was first painted red, blue and yellow, and the name Red-Blue Chair was not used until 1958. Cassina obtained the rights to reproduce Rietveld's designs in 1972 and makes the authorized version.

Marcel Breuer, 1925. Made by Knoll Breuer was still at the Bauhaus when he stripped the overstuffed club chair down to a skeleton of bent tubular steel with taut leather or canvas slung across it for seat, back and arms. The idea came from bicycle frames, whose steel he heard was bent like macaroni. It was the first chair of its kind, and the name came later, after Breuer's Bauhaus colleague Wassily Kandinsky, who admired an early prototype. Breuer granted Knoll the production rights, and Knoll makes the authorized version today.

Marcel Breuer, 1928. Made by Knoll The cantilevered side chair with a caned seat and back on one continuous loop of chromed tube is one of the most familiar dining chairs there is. Breuer designed it as the B32 shortly after leaving the Bauhaus. Its history is tangled. Legal credit for the cantilever idea went to the Dutch architect Mart Stam, and Thonet's catalogs later attributed the B32 to others. The Italian maker Gavina renamed it Cesca after Breuer's adopted daughter Francesca, and Knoll gained the rights when it bought Gavina in 1968.

Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, 1928. Made by Cassina The chaise longue reduced to a single chromed curve: a padded steel cradle resting on a separate black base, held by friction on rubber-covered crossbars so it stays put at whatever angle you tilt it. It was presented at the Salon d'Automne in 1929. Recognition tip: the cradle is not fixed to the base, so the two parts read as separate shapes. Cassina holds the exclusive reproduction rights and has made it since the mid-1960s, which is when it became famous.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with Lilly Reich, 1929. Made by Knoll Made for the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona, it became the default seat for formal lobbies for decades after. The steel frame forms an X on each side, with leather cushions buttoned in a grid laid over straps. Look for the crossed legs in side view and the tufted squares on seat and back. Mies granted Knoll the production rights to the Barcelona Collection, so Knoll's version is the authorized one. His collaborator Lilly Reich played a major role in the pavilion's furniture, long credited to Mies alone, and is now widely named as the chair's co-designer.

Alvar Aalto, 1932. Made by Artek as Armchair 41 Aalto took the tubular steel chair's floating seat and did it in wood. A single scrolled sheet of bent plywood forms seat and back, hung between two closed loops of laminated wood. It was designed for the Paimio Sanatorium, a tuberculosis hospital in Finland, and the angle of the back was meant to help patients breathe easily. Its success at London's Fortnum & Mason in 1933 helped lead to the founding of Artek, which has kept it in production ever since.

Emeco for the U.S. Navy, 1944. Made by Emeco A chair designed for warships rather than drawing rooms, which is why it looks so plain and lasts so long. Emeco's patented 77-step construction process was invented to meet a military need for lightweight, corrosion-resistant equipment, and it starts from soft recycled aluminum worked largely by hand. The brushed metal, slim curved back and gently splayed legs are now a staple of restaurants and offices. Many cheaper lookalikes exist; the authorized 1006 still comes from Emeco, the company Wilton Dinges founded in 1944.

Eero Saarinen, 1948. Made by Knoll Florence Knoll asked Saarinen for a chair that was like a basket full of pillows, something she could really curl up in, and he answered with a wide molded shell on thin steel legs, upholstered all over and fitted with loose cushions. It is the chair to recognize by posture: people sit in it sideways, knees up. Knoll introduced it in 1948 as the Model 70 and has kept it in continuous production since, made to the original specifications. Knoll's own pages give 1946 for the start of the design work.

Hans J. Wegner, 1949. Made by Carl Hansen & Søn as the CH24 The Y-shaped back splat that gives the Wishbone its name is the giveaway, rising from the seat to a single steam-bent top rail that curves around to form the arms. It was part of Wegner's first collaboration with Carl Hansen & Søn and has been in continuous production since. The woven paper cord seat began as a postwar substitute when materials were short, and making each chair still takes more than 100 production steps, most of them by hand.

Charles and Ray Eames, 1950. Made by Herman Miller The one-piece molded shell behind every plastic café chair since. The Eameses spent their careers exploring the chair as a single shell, starting in 1950 with the Molded Fiberglass Chair, and offered the shell on a range of interchangeable bases. When fiberglass production proved harmful to the environment, Herman Miller switched the shells to a safer plastic. The rounded arms flowing out of the back in one continuous curve are what set this armchair apart from the many shells sold as Eames style.

Harry Bertoia, early 1950s. Made by Knoll A sculptor's chair: welded steel wire bent into a faceted shell you can see straight through. Bertoia wrote that his wire chairs were mostly made of air, just like sculpture. Knoll produced Bertoia's wire chairs from the early 1950s, and the royalties from the Diamond let him give up furniture to concentrate on his metal sculpture. Dates vary by source, with both 1951 and 1952 given. Knoll still makes it, bare or with a seat pad or full cover.

Arne Jacobsen, 1955. Made by Fritz Hansen Better known as the Series 7, this stacking chair with a single sheet of pressed veneer for seat and back, pinched at the waist, on slim steel legs is one of the most familiar chairs in any office, school or kitchen. Jacobsen designed it for Fritz Hansen in 1955, and it has become the Danish maker's most successful product. The narrow waist, where the shell curves in between seat and back, is the detail to check against the many copies.

Charles and Ray Eames, 1956. Made by Herman Miller and Vitra Molded plywood shells, leather cushions and a matching ottoman on a swivel base: the Eameses' modern take on the English club chair. When it was introduced in 1956 there was nothing like it, and it has become the chair people picture first when they think of midcentury design. It debuted on national television that year, when the Eameses appeared on NBC's Home show, and Herman Miller has kept it in continuous production since. Vitra is the authorized maker for Europe and the Middle East, and Herman Miller makes it for the other markets.

Eero Saarinen, mid-1950s. Made by Knoll Saarinen wanted to clear up what he called the slum of legs under chairs and tables, and the Tulip chair does it with one stem. A molded shell rises from a single cast aluminum pedestal like a flower from its stalk. It belongs to his Pedestal Collection, which also includes the round tables it is usually seen with. Saarinen designed it for Knoll in the mid-1950s, with sources dating the work anywhere from 1955 to 1957, and Knoll makes the authorized version today.

Arne Jacobsen, 1958. Made by Fritz Hansen A high-backed shell that wraps around the sitter, made for the lobby of the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, which Jacobsen also designed. The lobby was furnished with 50 first-edition Eggs. Jacobsen worked out the shape by experimenting with clay in his garage before sculpting its inner structure in foam. The swivel base, the curved wings at head height and the tight, seamless upholstery make it easy to tell from a generic pod chair. Fritz Hansen produces and sells it today.

Verner Panton, about 1960. Made by Vitra One continuous S-curve with no legs at all: the seat flows down into a cantilevered base, and the whole stacking chair is a single piece of material, the first chair made that way. Getting there took years. Panton was sketching the idea in the late 1950s, Vitra's managing director Willi Fehlbaum agreed to develop it for series production, and it was presented to the public in August 1967, with mass production following in 1968. Early versions were costly to make, and Vitra now produces it in injection-molded polypropylene in a range of glossy colors.

Eero Aarnio, 1963. Made by Eero Aarnio Originals A fiberglass sphere with one side cut away, upholstered inside and set on a swivel base, it is a room within a room and pure 1960s space age. Aarnio's original sketch is dated January 11, 1963, and he built the first prototype at home after teaching himself to work with fiberglass. The chair made its debut at the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1966, where the first visitors to the stand ordered six on the spot. Eero Aarnio Originals is the authorized maker today.

Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick, 1994. Made by Herman Miller The office chair that made mesh the default. Instead of foam and fabric, the seat and back are taut, breathable woven suspension stretched across a frame, so it looks half-transparent and almost skeletal. It debuted in 1994 after extensive research by Stumpf and Chadwick and has been the benchmark for ergonomic seating ever since. Another giveaway: it comes in three sizes, A, B and C, sized to the sitter rather than one-size-fits-all.

Philippe Starck, 2002. Made by Kartell An eighteenth-century French armchair, oval back and all, rendered in clear polycarbonate and injected in one piece from a single mold. In its day it was one of the most daring pieces of polycarbonate molding anywhere. The joke works because the silhouette is so traditional and the material so obviously modern, which is why it slips into period rooms and minimalist ones alike. It is also one of the most copied chairs of recent years; the authorized version is made by Kartell.