The history of the House of Thonet begins in 1819, when Michael Thonet founded a joinery in Boppard on the Rhine and began to put his idea of shaped wood into practice.
In 1842, Clemens Prince Metternich, Austrian State Chancellor, brought Michael Thonet to Vienna and in 1851, on the occasion of the London World's Fair, he experienced his greatest worldwide success.
A total of six works were created in the CSFR, one in Poland and one in Hungary, followed by another in the FRG in 1891. After the Second World War and after the expropriation of all factories, except the one in the FRG, Dr. Fritz-Jacob Thonet, the great-grandson of Michael Thonet, re-established a small workshop in the Weißgerberlände in Vienna.
Thanks to the support of the Styrian governor Krainer, a factory in Rohrbach/Lafnitz was leased in 1953 and the construction of an own factory in Friedberg was started in 1963.
The factory was closed in 2006 and then sold. The Thonet exhibition is therefore the only museum of Thonet.