Gebrüder Thonet Vienna returns to Salone del Mobile presenting new works by India Mahdavi, AB Concept and Nichetto Studio

The Austrian brand is proud to return to the international furniture fair and to renew their collaboration with Iranian-French architect, designer and scenographer India Mahdavi. Gebrüder Thonet Vienna will also present new creations in collaboration with Hong Kong-based design and architecture practice AB Concept and Venice and Stockholm based Nichetto Studio

Salone del Mobile, 18 - 23 April 2023 ​Pavilion 4, Booth G05

Vienna, Austria, 29 March 2023 - Gebrüder Thonet Vienna returns to Salone del Mobile (18-23 April) presenting new collections realised in collaboration with internationally-acclaimed designers such as India Mahdavi, AB Concept and Nichetto Studio.

For this year’s Salone del Mobile, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna will showcase new designs within a stylistic presentation devised to highlight the pieces against the tranquil scenography of the overall booth. The new collections will harmoniously complement the atmosphere of Nordic homes, wrapped in natural woods and light colours, and immersed in an intimate and enveloping nature.

The new creations include the dining version of the Loop Chair, designed by India Mahdavi for Gebrüder Thonet Vienna in 2022, as well as the new Mickey, a comfortable armchair of generous dimensions also bearing Mahdavi’s signature.

Ed Ng, Co-Founder of international design practice AB Concept, collaborates with Gebrüder Thonet Vienna for the first time this year, presenting Hagu, a chair that softly embraces the body of the person sitting in it.

Luca Nichetto, founder of Nichetto Studio, plays with metal, a material new to Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, for Ample, creating a bridge between the brand’s traditional manufacturing techniques and modern innovation.

‘The new collection of chairs and armchairs designed by AB Concept and Nichetto Studio represent a real innovation in the world of Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, where the classic handcrafted curved wood leaves room for a plywood shell that embraces and envelops the whole system, wisely integrated with new metallic materials. The result fully expresses the aesthetic values of the brand’ says Riccardo Pigati, CEO of Gebrüder Thonet Vienna

INDIA MAHDAVI, LOOP DINING CHAIR AND MICKEY ARMCHAIR
Gebrüder Thonet Vienna renews their collaboration with India Mahdavi: for the second year in a row, the unmistakable style of the internationally renowned architect and designer meets the Austrian brand’s emblematic curved lines, giving life to a new dining chair and lounge chair that will be on show at Salone del Mobile.

In response to the invitation of the historic company Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, India Mahdavi has extended the Loop family, which already included a lounge chair and a banquette presented in 2022, with a newly designed dining chair and a lounge chair, called Mickey for its characteristic “ears” that recall those of a mouse, a palpable echo to Mahdavi's ‘childhood heroes’.
v In the words of India Mahdavi, ‘The Mickey chair is high and comfy but also embracing, colourful and kind. A friend to cherish and with big ears, who listens to all your fears.’

To express the company’s ancestral know-how, India Mahdavi stayed true to the motion, pursuing the line without lifting her pencil. This continuous thread, which acts as the Loop’s structure, coils itself up to form the chair’s articulation, leaving two loops bent in its wake. The seductive curls that characterise the Loop push the boundaries of possibility – India Mahdavi demands of the bent beech wood to double its efforts in order to amplify its beauty and roundness.

In the new Loop dining chair, the seat upholstered in yellow wool harmoniously matches to the natural essence of the wooden structure, while the Mickey armchair combines a black wood structure in slight contrast with two different nuances of green upholstery, highlighting the piece’s playful soul.

“Gebrüder Thonet Vienna is the only manufacturer in the world that enables you to translate a free hand drawing by giving it a wooden materiality of that quality” says India Mahdavi.

Together with AB Concept, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna sought to design a new chair to evolve its bent-wood heritage while integrating a new material. The Hagu chair is equally at home in a residential or contract setting, including hospitality environments, offering something unexpected and fresh while expressing the brand's aesthetic values. Elegant, lightweight, refined, and comfortable even for extended periods, the chair features a slim metal frame that supports a plywood shell with an ergonomically angled, upholstered seat pad. The frame extends slightly further than the shell at the back, providing an intuitive yet invisible "handle" for the staff to pull out the chair for a guest in a restaurant setting.

Gebrüder Thonet Vienna
​Salone Internazionale del Mobile
​Tuesday 18 - Sunday 23 April 2023
​Rho Fiera Milano
​Opening Hours: 9.30am to 6.30pm daily
​Pavilion 4, Booth G05

Preview Day:
​Tuesday 18 April
​9.30am to 6.30pm

Salone del Mobile

ABOUT INDIA MAHDAVI
​Architect, designer and scenographer, India Mahdavi lives and works in Paris.