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i think this chair is crap unless made of solid wood. wood and plastic composite sounds tacky as all hell.

I have 4 of these I'm trying to get rid of. All made of metal. How much should I sell them for??

Agreed. Ikea has nice ideas but most of the quality (of the furniture) should be left for teenagers or college students that need disposable furniture.

Powkang - This chair is suitable for outdoor use, while a Thonet bentwood chair is not.

I once had four of these, with a cane seat, many years ago. I loved them and hated having to return them to their rightful owner.

Something about the solid seat ruins the whole thing for me.

i have a set of four of these, and i like them very much, thank you. i went to ikea on a day when they were on sale for 9.99 each. when i get sick of them, i can just recycle them. the plastic wood is actually not as terrible as it sounds. not everyone who is interested in good design has the disposable income to pay upwards of 250 dollars per chair for vintage thonet. I guess i've revealed myself to be both poor and tacky as hell. ha!

The original Thonet cafe chair was designed with a solid seat, and the cane came later. I don't think the solid seat is all that bothersome, but that is just me. This chair has been knocked off so much trying to pass it off as a Thonet, I think Ikea actually did a good job of paying homage to Ikea in their own way.

Never! What a piece of disposable junk! I hate Ikea for this very reason.

having a penchant for furniture the internet told you to appreciate is nothing to brag about. take a second to try to understand why it might be interesting to see an icon of form realized in a new material by a manufacturer with similar aspirations to that of thonet almost 150 years ago. a thumbs up or thumbs down response shows you're not really thinking.

cake is so right. if thonet was around, would he shun mass production and mass accessibility. graves and gehry etc. don't seem to mind having their designs made out of more accessible, and perhaps lower quality, materials to fit a price point. yes, they make money off it, unlike unlicensed repros, but the opinions expressed above seem focused on the inferior materials and the design for the masses model.

Cake, Johnp—i'm with you. There's so much elitism here sometimes, it's not even funny. I guess good design is really isn't for the masses (cough, sputter). It's a classic form made new through the use of recycled materials, which I think is completely fresh. Bottom line, if you have beef with Ikea, and you and your wallet are so above buying products from there, then DON'T buy there. There's certainly no point in slagging a well-intentioned idea.

I'm really glad I live in a country where one of the original Thonet factories is still active and I can buy one of those chairs in bentwood for less than 60$ (taking in account that the dollar si weak). See it yourself here: http://www.ton.cz/eprevue/ItemInformation.po;jsessionid=uhVq8rqBcJu66jxm2xMLw1Pb(wmwFBSK5)?iid=4&seclid=-268909163-1194386521748
BTW: on the other hand, it doesn't seem that ogla chairs are sold any longer in Europe :/

Interesting, I hadn't known the cane came later. And what I had was more than likely a knock off. The cane just seemed to keep the chair airier which I loved.

My favourite rendition of this chair, though, has to be something my grandmother had--the back looked as if someone had twisted two coat hangers together.

Sorta...kinda...the same airy look.....

(And I'm no Ikea snob--I went there today to pick up a $1.99 curtain rod and came out lighter by $89.00.)

I'll bet that if the chair were from Wal-Mart rather than IKEA, we'd be hearing less about "good design" and more about the visible mold lines in the photo.

gah! this chair! saw it in an ikea catalogue and thought it must be too good to be true. and it totally is. i'm sorry to say, but in person it is even more hideous than the close-ups here of the composite show it to be. i can't afford the real deal either (which is why i was so excited at first to see the ikea version) but i'd rather go without than make do with a shoddy knock-off.

is TON in CZ really a thonet factory?

the red and the white versions of this look better than the black.
oddly, the mold lines are less visible. believe me you, i (with my background in sculpture and fabrication) had a good, hard look at them. the black just has this ashy quality that's just no good.
Wende— If this chair were available from Wal-mart, i wouldn't have bought it. Can't support a company that is reknown for treating their workers like absolute crap. I support good companies and their "inferior" products.

about the TON factory in CZ: according to this http://www.ton.cz/en/history-technology.php, it's really one of the original factories founded by Thonet and still produces the original thonet chairs of the 19th century, but, because of history (2 world wars, communism, etc...) it doesn't seem to be connected to the Thonet firm in germany http://www.thonet.de/

>>sorry for the link mistake (it incorporated the comma)
http://www.ton.cz/en/history-technology.php
it should work now