The Moravian Gallery in Brno owns the largest public collection of bentwood furniture in the Czech Republic. The exhibition will show pieces of furniture from the collection and selected pieces belonging to private collectors.
Shortly before 1900 manufacturers of bentwood furniture began to collaborate with designers. Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Siegel and Otto Prutscher designed many unique models. A series of mergers of the pre-war producers Kohn, Mundus and Thonet led, in 1925, to the establishment of Thonet-Mundus, a. s. The firm continued the trend of working together with designers, such as Josef Hoffmann, Josef Frank, Hans Luckhardt. A number of fine designs were created anonymously in the company studios. Furniture using a bent metal tube, designed by Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and others, became a company trademark. The tradition was picked up and further influenced by the Spojené UP works with Jindřich Halabala.
