Portable Timekeepers

QUESTION: My grandfather left me the pocket watch he had received on his retirement. The watch is a Waltham. It still works but I’m not sure if it keeps good time. I already have a wristwatch and a smartphone, so I really don’t need this pocket watch. Is this watch collectible? If so, would it be a good idea for me to start a collection of them?

ANSWER: Your grandfather probably didn’t use his pocket watch very much. Businesses commonly gave gold pocket watches to members of their management staff upon their retirement. Before you do anything, you should take his watch to a watchmaker to have it checked and cleaned. Chances are, the watch is in like-new condition.

Pocket watches date back to the early 16th century. German locksmith Peter Henlein from Nuremburg invented the first to portable timepiece. Henlein also invented a spring-driven mechanism which made the personal timepiece possible. Spiral springs could be wound and uncoiled to move the hour hand of the clock. However, this mechanism was highly inaccurate because coiled springs don't unwind at a constant speed. But having a timepiece people could or wear on a chain, even if it was off by an hour or so, was a great improvement.

However, Henlein’s portable clock had a heavy drum-shaped brass box-like case, typically four or five inches wide and abut three inches thick, take up too much space in a person’s pouch. Unfortunately, pickpockets could easily snatch a pouch worn outside a person's clothing, so cautious people began to hide their pocket clock inside their clothing. This proved to be uncomfortable, so people began wearing their clocks on a  chain around their necks.

By 1653, tailors had begun sewing small pockets called "fobs," from the German word fuppe, into the waistband of breeches, in which to carry a watch, money, or other valuables. The fob, which means to cheat or misrepresent, was meant to prevent any  thief from easily removing a person's valuables.

By the end of the 18th Century, improvements in watchmaking resulted in watches that were thinner and more rounded. Tailors sewed smaller fob pockets into vests so that people could carry a watch attached to a chain.

Early pocket watches only had an hour hand. The dial wasn’t covered with glass, but usually had a hinged brass cover, often decoratively pierced with grillwork so the time could be read without opening. Watchmakers created movements of iron or steel, held together with tapered pins and wedges, until after 1550 when screws appeared. Many of the movements included striking or alarm mechanisms. The shape of the watches soon evolved into a rounded form called Nuremberg eggs. And even later in the century a trend for unusually shaped watches, shaped like books, animals, fruit, stars, flowers, insects, crosses, and even skulls, became popular. Beginning in 1610, a glass crystal covered the watch dials. To wind and set the watch, the owner opened the back and fitted a key to a square arbor and turned it.

The first solution to uneven unwinding came when watchmakers realized the spring uncoiled at a more constant pace when it wasn’t wound tightly. Watchmakers invented several ways to prevent this. The stackfreed was a cam with an additional spring that compensated for the main spring's changes in speed, and the fusee was a stop that prevented the spring from being wound too tightly. It was usually made of stiff hog bristle.

In 1675 several watchmakers discovered that a spiral spring attached to the balance greatly increased accuracy. Suddenly, watches reflected the correct time within minutes rather than being off by close to an hour. Until this time, watches had to be wound twice a day. A fourth wheel added to the movement decreased the winding required to once per day. Less than 100 years later, watchmakers added a hand to measure seconds. As years passed, people wanted calendars to mark the day, date and month, phases of the moon, as well as alarms, chimes and music.

Early pocket watches had no covering to protect the face or the hour hand. In the 18th century English watchmakers began creating gold and silver cases to slide the watch into to protect it. Watchmakers added glass crystals to protect the dial around 1610 but because they were translucent, people still had to remove them to read the time.

English watchmakers added jewels, usually second-rate gemstones in the 18th century as bearings in the watches to prevent friction and wear between metal parts. However, watchmakers from other countries didn’t adopt "jeweling" for nearly another 100 years. Today, the number of jewels a watch has is a sign of its quality and durability. Most pocket watches have between 7 and 21 jewels.

Pocket watches came in either of two types of cases—hunting or open-faced. Hunting case watches, popular during the 19th century, have a spring-hinged circular metal lid or cover, that closes over the watch-dial and crystal, protecting them from dust, scratches and other damage or debris, and opens when the owner pushes a button. Most antique hunter-case watches have the lid-hinges at the 9 o'clock position and the stem and crown of the watch at the 3 o'clock position. By 1900, the open face watch took over and hunting case watches became less commonplace. Watchmakers made cases of silver and gold. Many were gold-filled, with two thin sheets of gold on the outside around a thicker layer of brass. They also used a variety of silver-colored material, with names like silveride, usually nickel based.

Waltham pocket watches are very collectible. But because watch designs changed often in the early years, they sometimes made only a few of some models. A good example is the Waltham Model Appleton, a size 20, 18-carat gold watch with a rear key wind that had sold for $10,000. Because so many were made and in such variety, collectors can buy a pocket watch in running condition from as low as $100 US up to the $1000s if you want. Since most pocket watches don’t appreciate much in value, it’s possible to start a modest collection on a limited budget.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The  Vernacular Style" in the 2024 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Dreaming of a Brite Christmas

 

QUESTION: For several years I’ve been searching for older ornaments for my Christmas tree. I’ve seen a good number at flea markets and antique cooperatives. Many of these are still in their original boxes marked “Shiny Brite.” I’d like to know more about this company. When did they produce ornaments and what kind did they produce?

ANSWER: Today, the trend is to decorate Christmas trees with handcrafted ornaments, from simpler ones sold at church bazar to finely crafted ones of wood, silver, and gold sold at Christmas markets throughout the world. But some people prefer to decorate their trees with nostalgic glass ornaments from their childhood.

Ornaments that decorated yesterday’s trees continue to create holiday traditions. Shiny glass orbs hang from branches in bright, shiny colors, and sparkly patterns. Shiny Brite was a mid-20th-century brand created by German-American immigrant Max Eckardt.

Blown-glass Christmas ornaments with hand-painted accents got their start in the German village of Lauscha in the 1840s. Glassmakers blew molten glass into molds shaped like fruit and nuts, then silvered the inside with a special compound of silver nitrate and sugar water. 

As a native of a small village near Lauscha, Eckhardt knew the appeal of glass ornaments and also saw their potential in the American market. He had been importing hand-blown glass balls from his homeland since the early 20th century. He had the foresight to anticipate a disruption in his supply of glass from Germany from the upcoming World War II and in 1937, he established the Shiny Brite Company in New York.  The silver nitrate coating on the insides of his ornaments inspired him to name his company Shiny Brite.

To keep his company afloat, Eckhardt sought the help of New York’s Corning Glass Company, with the promise that F.W. Woolworth would place a large order if Corning could modify its glass ribbon machine, which made light bulbs, to produce ornaments. This machine, built in 1926, produced 2,000 light bulbs per minute. The transition was a success, and Woolworth’s ordered more than 235,000 ornaments. In December 1939,Eckhardt shipped the first machine-made batch to its 5-and-10-Cent Stores, where they sold for 2 to 10 cents each.

By 1940, Corning was producing 300,000 unadorned ornaments per day, sending the clear glass balls to outside artists, including those at Eckardt’s factories, to be hand decorated. After being lined with silver nitrate, the ornaments ran through a lacquer bath, received decoration from Eckardt’s employees and packaging in brown cardboard boxes. According to a LIFE magazine article from December 1940, Corning Glass Works expected to produce 40 million ornaments by the end of that year, supplying 100 percent of the domestic ornament market.

Originally, the ornaments were plain silver, but eventually Eckardt produced them in a large variety of colors: with classic red the most popular color in the 1940s, followed by green, gold, pink and blue, both in solids and stripes. The company also offered Shiny Brite ornaments in a variety of shapes besides balls, including tops, bells, icicles, teardrops, trees, finials, pine cones, and Japanese lanterns, and reflectors. Workers decorated some with mica “snow.”

Through the 1940s and 1950s, Shiny Brite ornaments became the most popular tree ornaments in the U.S. Eckhardt stressed that they were American-made as a selling point during World War II by featuring Uncle Sam shaking hands with Santa on the front of the original 1940's boxes.

Corning continued to crank out Shiny Brite ornaments, and by the 1950s, production reached a rate of 1,000 per minute; with machines also painting them at that time. The 1950s was the peak of Shiny Brite production and popularity, with Eckardt operating four New Jersey factories to keep pace with the demand.

Shiny Brite ornaments dangled from trees through the early 1960s, until plastic ornaments became more popular. But over the years, vintage Shiny Brites have remained popular with collectors for their beauty and nostalgia, and acting as a sort of time capsule of American holiday history. They are some of the most sought after vintage ornaments from the mid 20th century and are the perfect decoration for those Space-Age aluminum trees.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Going Nuts for Nutcrackers

 

QUESTION: My family comes from a German background. When my ancestors first arrived in the United States back in the 1880s, they brought with them many of the customs and traditions. This included how we celebrated Christmas. My favorite job as a young boy was setting up the display of nutcrackers. I continued to do this until I left to go to college. But in all that time, no one ever explained to me how the tradition of nutcrackers at Christmas came to be. Could you please give me some history on them? 

ANSWER: Nutcrackers have been a part of Christmas ever since the first one appeared in human form in the 17th century. For Volker Fuchtner, making nutcrackers has been a family business ever since his great-great grandfather, Wilhelm Friedrich Fuchtner, created the classic wooden nutcracker in Germany's Erzgebirge region.

The Erzgebirge is a range of low, forested hills that form the border between the Czech Republic and the German state of Saxony. The town of Seiffen, which somehow managed to keep the woodworking tradition alive during the days of communist occupation, has more than 100 small family workshops, in which townspeople produce the nutcrackers. There are also huge replicas of the nutcrackers and other wooden figures all over town, and a visit to Seiffen at Christmas is special.

Mining used to be the main industry in the Erzgebirge—the name translates as "Ore Mountains"—but the silver, iron, tin and nickel eventually ran out. Woodworking then became a logical occupation for the people, since the region had abundant wood and rushing mountain streams to power their lathes and saws.

At first, woodcarvers made simple spindles, plates, staffs and common household articles, but they gradually turned to toys, notably cylindrical dolls produced with a lathe. Around 1870, some of the woodcarvers adapted these toys to become classic nutcrackers.

A classic nutcracker usually stands 14 to 18 inches tall and takes the form of a brightly painted king, soldier or some other stern authority figure with huge painted teeth, an upward curling moustache, and a nut-cracking mouth that reaches to his waist when open.

The fierce-looking nutcrackers served a purpose. Though Germans looked up to authority figures, they were also a bit resentful of them. The nutcrackers enabled the townspeople to make fun of them. The soldiers weren't limited to the original Ruritanian uniforms. They also sported spiked helmets or dressed as Russian hussars or British grenadiers. And there could be other fierce characters, including kings and robbers. The figures later appeared as more benevolent types from the German culture, such as night watchmen, chimney sweeps, gnomes, foresters, monks, and even Rumpelstilzchen.

The Grimm brothers, who collected the famous fairy tales, said in their dictionary, that a nutcracker was "often in the form of a misshapen little man, in whose mouth the nut, by means of a lever or screw, is cracked open.

There are about 120 steps in the making of a nutcracker, which explains why even new ones sell for $150 to $250. Woodworkers cut pieces of beech, maple, birch, linden and pine are cut into proper sized blocks, then leave them to season for up to two years in the open air under a roof. They do the first step in the manufacturing process on a lathe. Craftsmen turn the body and head as one cylindrical piece, with beveled shoulders and chiseled out areas for the nutcracker and lever. Others turn the arms and legs separately, fastening them to the body along with the stand.

After forming the body, a hand carver gives the figure a nose, a hat and whatever special features the particular character gets. Next come several layers of priming, after each of which the piece must thoroughly dry. Then a painter uses a fine brush to give the figure its eyes, moustache, teeth, decorative tunic, sword and other special features. Again, each coat of paint must dry before the painter applies another. Then comes the final assembly, in which another craftsmen adds the lever and glues on rabbit fur for hair, a beard, and sometimes even a moustache.

At least that’s how the nutcracker makers of the Erzgebirge do it. Each firm marks their genuine nutcracker with a stamp showing a stylized soldier on a hobbyhorse and the slogan ECHT ERZGEBIRGE HOLZKINST MIT HERZ or “Genuine Erzgebirge wooden art with heart.”

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

A Musical Chair for Musical Chairs

 

QUESTION: This summer while vacationing on Cape Cod, I spent some time antiquing. In one of the shops I discovered an unusual chair. It looked like a fancy side chair but the seat had hinges. When I lifted it up, I found a music box. The dealer told me that it was a Swiss Musical Chair, used in the game of musical chairs. What can you tell me about this chair? Where did it originate and who made it? 

ANSWER: While these chairs were popular with the wealthier set in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, they don’t often appear in antique shops. Something like this is most often found in auctions or antique shows.

No one knows for sure who invented the game of musical chairs and when. But historians note that people have been playing it for centuries. Previously called “Trip to Jerusalem.” But when people began calling it Musical Chairs is also unknown. 

Trip to Jerusalem —known in German as “Reise Nach Jerusalem”—was a game played predominately in Germany. So why did people call the game “Trip to Jerusalem?” Some historians theorize that the Crusades inspired the name in the Middle Ages. They believe that the elimination of players who cannot find an empty seat at the end of each round compares to the losses suffered by the Crusaders as they battled the Muslims for control of Jerusalem. This would have made the game more relevant to players at the time. But as the centuries rolled on, that relevancy disappeared, so players started calling the game exactly what it was—a game of musical chairs.

Another less plausible theory, is that the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel, called the Aliyah, inspired the game. During these trips, there was supposedly very limited spaces for Jews on the ships to the Land of Israel. This is supposedly depicted in the game by the number of chairs used. However, neither of these theories has ever been confirmed.

Musical chairs has always been a fun party game. The fact that it began with a "musical chair" seems lost in obscurity. The Swiss and Germans, known for their music boxes, found a novel way to insert one in the seat of an elaborately decorated chair. A hostess placed the chair among others in a circle. The game’s players walked around the circle while the music from the chair’s music box played. Whoever sat on the chair and stopped the music by engaging the switch that turned off the music box, had to leave the game. The last person to remain won.

Swiss and German craftsmen produced these chairs from the 1880s to the 1920s. They  used several kinds of wood, usually walnut plus some exotic varieties for inlays. They usually didn’t sign their chairs. Often, these chairs came in a set with an armchair and side chairs. 

The seat and seatback of these chairs featured intricately inlaid cartouches each depicting various images, including carved leaves and edelweiss, alpine chamois and deer. They placed the music box mechanism, made by another party, under the seat.

Woodcarving brought riches to the villages of Switzerland and the Black Forest region of Germany. It became all the fashion and no English traveler left these areas without having purchased some sort of woodcarving to take back home. As the tourist industry flourished and thrived, so did the carvers, selling their wares to the wealthy tourists.

Though the idea of a Grand Tour began in the 17th century, it wasn’t until the mid 19th century that it reached its peak. The wealthy believed the primary value of the Grand Tour lay in the exposure both to classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.

The Grand Tour not only provided travelers with a cultural education but allowed those who could afford it the opportunity to buy things otherwise unavailable at home, such as the woodcarvings of Black Forest craftsmen. Grand Tourists would return with crates of art, books, pictures, sculpture, and items of culture, which would be displayed in libraries, cabinets, gardens, and drawing rooms.

This fashion had been set in motion by Queen Victoria's visit to the area in April 1868, and by her subsequent inspiration to build a Swiss chalet at Osborne House and fill it with Black Forest and Swiss carvings.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

On the Lamm

 

QUESTION: My grandmother has been collecting fancy cups and saucers for several decades. Some in her collection are simple in design, but others are artistically decorated. Two sets have an unusual shape with pedestal cups decorated with ornate paintings. The mark on the bottom of the cup and saucer is a blue lamb with the word "Dresden" below it. Who produced these cups and saucers and when were they made?

ANSWER: Chances are that the two cups and saucers in your grandmother’s collection are from Dresden, Germany. Ceramic factories such as Rosenthal and Meissen produced blanks that were later decorated by independent studios. Ambrosius Lamm owned and operated one of the top decorating studios, producing consistently high quality wares. 

The city of Dresden became a leading cultural center in the 17th century. In the 18th century, the city became known as the "Florence on the Elbe" because of its magnificent Baroque architecture and its outstanding museums. Artists, especially  porcelain decorators, took up residence there.

Between 1855 and 1944, more than 200 painting studios existed in the city. The studios bought porcelain white ware from manufacturers such as Meissen and Rosenthal for decorating, marketing and reselling throughout the world. Ambrosius Lamm owned one of the top decorating studios consistently producing high quality wares.

Lamm operated a porcelain painting studio and arts and antique shop from 1887 to 1949. It was located at Zinzendorfstrasse 28 in Deesden. He had approximately 25 employees by 1894, which grew to about 40 in 1907. 

 studio became well known for painting in the Meissen, Vienna, and Copenhagen style. Lamm's specialties included Old Dresden flowers, Watteau and mythology, as well as decorated luxury and utility articles in the old and new styles. Lamm bought blanks from a number of manufacturing firms, including Meissen, Rosenthal, Hutschenreuther and Silesia.

Lamm used at least three different marks by Lamm, including a pensive angel with Dresden and Saxony, an L within a shield, and the most common mark, an outline of a lamb with Dresden underneath.

He also produced cabinet cups and saucers. Middle and upperclass Victorians often had display cabinets in their dining rooms in which they displayed fine decorated plates and cups and saucers. A set of six flared cups with scrolled handles, hand painted with French court beauties, such as Mme. Lebrun, sell for between $3,000 and 4,500.

Collectors can still find desirable cabinet cups, as well as sherbets and goblets can be found, decorated  on Rosenthal blanks with a gilt cutout star or flower inside the cup. Usually, well-painted portraits of men and women in period dress appeared on the outside with heavy gold paste work.

Lamm often used rich cobalt blue and luster glazes for his ground colors. His favorite decorative techniques were jeweling and beading. His studio was well known for using heavy intricate gold paste work on borders of plates and cups.

 also enjoyed painting cherubs or putti. Many of his pieces featured cherubs holding fruit, flowers, and playing musical instruments. He often portrayed them floating amid fluffy clouds.

His paintings on porcelain cups and saucers and cabinet plates rivaled the quality of Royal Vienna and Sevres porcelains.  For example, he pronounced a series of 12 plates portraying ones from various oil paintings displayed in the famous Scamper Gallery in the Zwinger Palace. These plates had cobalt blue borders with elaborate gold paste gilding.

Lamm’s excellent reputation as a top porcelain decorator encouraged wealthy families in Germany and abroad to commission demitasse sets and dinner services from his studio. These sets included the monogram of the owner in intricate gold work. Examples for sale today include dinner plates and serving items with one to four hand-painted courting scenes within medallions on the border.

 occasionally decorated dinnerware with the floral and gilt patterns typically used by other Dresden studios. But he preferred to be more creative in his designs. His studio produced a line of dinner and tea ware featuring bold, large vibrant flowers covering each piece. Lamm’s studio was particularly known for its artistic rendering of flowers.

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The View is Blue

 

QUESTION: I’ve always liked the look of the Blue Willow ware dishes that my mom used to bring out for holiday dinners. Even though the scenes on them were all the same, I was still intrigued by the use of blue on a white background. When I became an adult, I started to look at other pieces of Chinese blue and white porcelain. Then one day while browsing a local antique show, I spotted a tea bowl and saucer, decorated in underglaze blue with two cartoonish Chinese fishermen unraveling their nets. At first, I thought the set was Chinese, but the dealer said it was made by Meissen in Germany in the 18th century. The set was way out of my price range, but I took a photo of it with my smartphone and decided I had to learn more. While I’ve learned a bit about these early handpainted porcelain wares, I’d like to know more. Can you help me?

ANSWER: While most people associate Meissen with 19th-century porcelain figurines, they were the first to produce hard-paste porcelain in Europe at the royal factory at Meissen, near Dresden, in 1710.

In 1717, King August the Strong of Dresden Saxony, announced a reward of 1,000 thalers to the first person who could come up with blue porcelain painting similar to that  of the Chinese imports. August called the white porcelain white gold. August had previously provided the funds to set up the royal factory in Meissen.

Johann Friedrich Boettger produced the first successful examples of European porcelain. He sent the King a letter on March 28, 1709, promising "porcelain with the finest glaze and all its attendant painting and decoration equal to that of the East Indian," by which he meant the Chinese. But despite his claims of having produced some preliminary pieces of blue underglaze painted porcelain, he was unsuccessful.

However, the sum of 1,000 thalers attracted many craftsmen, as well as charlatans. Notorious among them were a father and son team called the Mehlhorns, who in 1719 bragged to the local newspaper about possessing the secret of blue painting. However, they never produced consistent results. The real credit for developing the underglaze blue color goes to David Koehler and Samuel Stoeltzel, who accomplished it between 1721 and 1722. And although the King acknowledged their success, they never saw the 1,000 thalers.

One of the most talented early blue painters was Johann Caspar Ripp. He was already an accomplished faience painter trained in Delft when Johann Gregarious Hoeroldt brought him to Meissen late in 1720. But his creativity and independence made Hoeroldt jealous, so he fired him in 1723. 

Cobalt blue decoration began to be manufactured on an industrial scale in 1789, when Meissen began producing its most popular underglaze blue pattern—Blue Onion. 

While the popularity of the Blue Onion pattern exploded after1860, it was not the most common underglaze blue decoration during the 18th century. The earliest Meissen pieces depict imaginary Chinese scenes known as “chinoiserie” and Kakiemon-style decorations inspired by the Japanese Arita wares. As a set pattern, the most common one was actually the Strawflower decoration, later adapted and made world-famous by the Royal Copenhagen Factory.

Some of the rarest and most stunning underglaze blue wares were those that combined blue and overglaze polychrome painting in a single composition. Artists painted the background scenery in cobalt blue and the artist, visualizing the final painting, reserved areas prior to firing to which he would later apply an overglaze polychrome painting to complete the scene. Because artists handpainted each piece with unique designs, no two pieces are completely alike. 

In the 19th century, Meissen standardized the underglaze decoration, applying it with stencils to outline the pattern, a job often left to apprentices.

Therefore, single pieces from the mid-18th century today sell for high prices, their value coming more from their rarity and age. They represent a time in the history of European porcelain when the blue color was just being brought under control. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Ancients" in the 2021 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Original Cafe Chair

 

QUESTION: I recently purchased two bentwood chairs at an antique shop in a nearby town. Both have woven cane seats and the number “14" pressed into the wood under the rim of the seat. I’ve seen similar chairs in coffee shops and cafes, but I purchased these to use in my kitchen. The cane is in good condition and the chairs are stained a dark brown. Can you tell me anything about these chairs—who made them and how old are they? 

ANSWER: You made a great purchase. Your chairs are commonly known as “bistro” or “cafe” chairs, and while most people think they date from the early 20th century, they actually date back to the 1850s.

Michael Thonet (pronounced “toe-net”), a clever and creative cabinetmaker from Boppard am Rhein, Germany, invented the process for bending wood and as a result created the first pieces of bentwood furniture. He originally made your chairs in 1859, however, his company, which is still in existence, made over 50 million by 1930. So yours could date from the early 20th century. 

Thonet, the son of master tanner Franz Anton Thonet, started out as a carpenter's apprentice in 1811. Eight years later, he opened his own shop. In the beginning, he carved his pieces from European beechwood. 

In the 1830s, Thonet began trying to make furniture out of glued and bent wooden slats. His first success was the Bopparder Schichtholzstuhl, or Boppard layerwood chair, in 1836. The following year, he purchased the Michelsmühle, the glue factory that made the glue that he used. However, he failed to obtain the patent for his new process in Germany and England in 1940, so he tried again in France and Russia the next year, but again failed. 

The steam engine appeared on the scene around the time that Thonet's was experimenting with his bending process. He discovered that he could bend light, strong wood into curved, graceful shapes by forming the wood in hot steam. This enabled him to design elegant, lightweight, durable and comfortable furniture, which appealed strongly to style trend at the time. His pieces were a complete departure from the heavy, carved designs of the past.

At the Koblenz trade fair of 1841, Thonet met Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, who was enthusiastic about Thonet's furniture and invited him to his Vienna court. During 1842, Thonet presented his furniture—particularly his chairs—to the Imperial Family. On July 16 1842: Metternich granted Thonet the right "to bend any type of wood, even the most brittle: into the desired forms and curves by chemical and mechanical means." The Prince granted him a second, nonrenewable 13-year patent on July 10, 1856 "for manufacturing chairs and table legs of bent wood, the curvature of which is effected through the agency of steam or boiling liquids.”

When his first factory in Boppard establishment got into financial trouble, he sold it and moved his family to Vienna, where in 1849, he opened a new factory called the Gebrüder Thonet. In 1850, he produced his Number 1 chair, which he intended to sell to café owners.  

He received a bronze medal for his Vienna bentwood chairs at the London World's Fair in 1851, at which he received international recognition. At the next World's Fair in Paris in 1855, he received the silver medal for his new and improved bentwood chair design. In 1856, he opened a new factory in Korycany, Moravia because of the country’s ample supply of beechwood. 

By 1859, he developed his most famous chair—the Number 14, known as Konsumstuhl No. 14 or Vienna coffeehouse chair No.14—for which he finally received a gold medal at the 1867 Paris World's Fair. It became the first example of bentwood furniture. 

Furniture experts regard the No. 14 chair a design classic. It has been praised by many designers and architects, including Le Corbusier, who said "Never was a better and more elegant design and a more precisely crafted and practical item created." 

Thonet produced his No. 14 chair using six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws, and two nuts. He made the wooden parts by heating beechwood slats to 212 °F, pressing them into curved cast-iron molds, then drying them at 158 °F for 20 hours. The chairs could be mass-produced by unskilled workers and disassembled to save space during transportation—an idea used today by the Swedish company IKEA to flat-pack its furniture. By the 1870s, Thonet owned offices in almost 20 countries.

The firm’s later chairs used eight pieces of wood and also had two diagonal braces  between the seat and back to strengthen that particular joint.

Today, a No. 14 from the 1860s with a near-perfect seat can fetch about $1,000 at auction.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.