Featured Bentwood Rocking Chair - Yugoslavia

bentwood by Kali Koshak posted Nov 14, 2023 at 7:53 AM

bentwood yugoslavia by Kali Koshak posted Nov 14, 2023 at 7:53 AM

They say you can't look for these bentwood rocking chairs, they have to look for you.
Couldn't believe my eyes when I saw one yesterday.

Clearly not a Thonet, made in Yugoslavia, but it has a less common double spiral patterns instead of the single and bent support. Can anyone tell me anything about it?

I am smitten.

 

Thonet had furniture made in different parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a result, Thonet style furniture has been made in South Slavia, Hungary and Slovakia ever since the days of Thonet.

I have a similar rocking chair from Hungary, brought over in parts by a Hungarian WW I refugee who fled to the Netherlands by train.
The Netherlands was neutral during WW I, and a safe haven for refugees.

My chair is dear to me too. Not just because of the beautiful style, but also because it was such a precious possession of the Hungarian refugee, her only memory of her home country.

 

I have a Thonet too, marked Thonet but no location. A gift from my husband in anticipation of our son's birth in 1969.

 

Wonderful!
Mine isn't a real one though, it is 'in the style of', probably by a maker that once worked for Thonet. Much like Kali's, except older and made in a different country.

 

Had to have been made between 1918 and 1992. I would agree, not a Thonet. This rather extravagant rocker style was fairly common in the US in the 1970s and 80s; I would think that yours was made then as well.

 

There was an import store that sold these,I bought my grandmother one. That was 1982 or so. I also bought a matching hat rack. Now I wonder what happened to them.

 

She was tired of dusting them!

 

Feather duster or the modern equivalent, takes about two seconds. Not that I do it that often, I am a notorious non-duster.

 

The scrolling on yours is gorgeous!

 

LOL! Not my grandma,she was the original clean freak . They were in my uncles house when she died in 2005 ,she still had them all those years later. But I loathed him,so I never went back there after the funeral.

 

Agree, 80s. A lot of Yugoslavian furniture imported then. Press-in caning is telling as well.

 

Oh, my grandmother once had the same chair in her attic, and she gave it to her neighbors because she simply didn’t need it. Who knew that this was such a rare thing now.