Bentwood Chair Mod. No. 255

• Design for the Café Museum
• Design: Adolf Loos (1870–1933)
• Execution: Jacob & Josef Kohn
• c. 1898
• Bentwood, red-brown stained beech, caned seat
• Leopold Museum, Vienna

Adolf Loos designed the interior of Café Museum in Vienna, still in operation today. Loos highly valued functionality and simple design without ornamentation. When the café opened in April 1899, his interior design was met with both praise and resentment in equal measure. Most Viennese who had expected glamorous decorations felt that the café was too restrained and sober. However, Loos’s practical and functional design influenced Modernist architecture later on.