J.&J. Kohn - Cradle - Cradle for children, model No. 3 - Beech

Cradle made of curved beech wood, attributed to J. & J. Kohn, Thonet style, Art Nouveau, 1895 – Austria

Exceptional cradle for children made of curved beech wood, a design attributed to the Austrian Jacob and Josef Kohn (father and son) in the purest Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth century, with a clear reference to Thonet. With delicate forms, the curved wood gives the cradle a complex yet light appearance, endowing it with an elegance and slenderness visible in every part of the piece, from the legs to the vertical arm on which the canopy hook is located. The basket has a boat shape and is screwed to the ends, which allows it to remain stationary or to rock to lull the child. The interior was completed with bedding, large cushions and pillows to create a soft and protected bed. They are known as “arborescent cradles,” and it was common to find them in the homes of affluent and bourgeois families across the continent.

Curved wooden designs became omnipresent as seating for cafés and gardens and, later, as elaborately crafted upholstered household furniture. Economical, durable, lightweight and ideal for export, because the components could be assembled after shipment. Pieces like the cradle by J. & J. Kohn became perfect symbols of the new industrial era, not forgetting the dominant Art Nouveau style.

It is a very innovative technique for its time, since furniture was made by steaming pieces of wood to bend them and placing them in metal molds to create the desired curvature, then hardening it again by drying in ovens. Subsequently they were assembled with hardware, instead of the traditional hand-carved joints. The idea of standardized components revolutionized the principles of furniture production.

The process of bentwood had been developed by the German designer Michael Thonet in the mid-19th century in order to manufacture functional and appealing furniture in an efficient and economical way. In fact, he patented the system in 1841, but other manufacturers in Austria-Hungary burst onto the scene when that patent expired in 1869, such as the firm J. & J. Kohn, which had already developed models with their own distinctive character since 1867, becoming its main competitor. Already at the Paris World's Fair of 1878 Kohn presented an entire pavilion made of bentwood in which two pieces stood out above all the rest: a bed and a cradle. In reality, neither Jacob & Josef Kohn nor the Brothers Thonet invented wooden cribs, but they did transpose the language of solid bentwood to the designs of cribs existing in the mid-19th century. As a reference, we can take the example of R. Winfield's wooden cradle, presented at the London World's Fair of 1851, of which drawings survive. J. & J. Kohn specialized in the manufacture and sale of this type of furniture, and thanks to their exports to Spain and Latin America they gained great influence. In our country it became especially popular in Valencia, where several manufacturers produced reproductions of tree-like cribs of the Kohn type. Thus, among Spanish manufacturers, the Kohn style triumphed.

Over time, the models in Kohn's catalog were simplified, becoming less luxurious and more functional. Specifically, the piece we present corresponds to what appears to be the firm's model No. 3, as attributed (for it is the same model) in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (J. & J. Kohn, Vienna, Josef Kohn, Jacob Kohn. Child’s cradle (model 1573). c. 1895 | MoMA), the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (Moderniste Cradle by Kohn | Disseny Hub Barcelona) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Berceau (mbam.qc.ca)). Drawings, exhibition photographs, brand catalogs, and postcards showing the above are preserved in order to admire the differences.

Model: Children's crib model No. 3
Designers: Attributed to Josef and Jacob Kohn (J. & J. Kohn)
Style: Art Nouveau / Thonet style
Materials: curved beech wood
Period: Late 19th century (1895- 1899)
Country of origin: Vienna, Austria
Provenance: Private collection, France
Good condition relative to its age and usage.
Dimensions: 197.5 x 148 x 67 cm.

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