BH | Studio Vincennes Bentwood Dining Chair

The bentwood café chair was born in Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century, when makers learned to steam solid wood and bend it into curves. Light, strong and made from only a few parts, it filled the cafés of Paris and the coffee houses of Europe by the millions and remains one of the most familiar chairs in the world.

This chair has the classic looped back, two bent hoops one inside the other, over a round wooden seat, with a ring of bent wood bracing the legs below for strength. It is made of solid hardwood under a durable polyurethane finish in Jet or Hazel that stands up to daily meals and wipes clean, and plastic glides protect the floor. It is light enough to lift with one hand and arrives fully assembled, ready to pull up to the table.

A run of bentwood chairs looks smart around a marble-topped table in a kitchen with white tiles and copper pans, and they are made for hard-working rooms: an eat-in kitchen, a café-style breakfast corner, a dining room in an industrial loft. One alone works as a desk chair in a small study or as a hall chair by the coat hooks. It brings a Paris bistro feeling to any table. This listing is for one chair.