This Viennese wooden settee was made around the turn of the 20th century. It belonged to the family of the Pomor craftsman and shipbuilder Stepan Grigoryevich Kuchin (1867–1942). The settee was placed on the second floor of his house on Zagorodny Prospekt in the town of Onega. In the 1930s, the house was confiscated, and some of the furniture was given to relatives for safekeeping.
After the House-Museum of the Polar explorer Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin was established in 1988 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, the settee was donated to the museum along with other furniture. Alexander Kuchin was the son of Stepan Kuchin. In 1913, he joined Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov on an expedition to the north of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The expedition crew went missing.
The bentwood settee was made of beech wood. The plywood seat with a rosette is shaped like a stylized flower and has many holes. The back is formed by a wide arch that is attached to the back legs. The settee has oval armrests.
The parts were connected using iron screws. On the inside of the underbracing, there are fragments of a sticker with the inscription “WOJCIECHÓW” and images of prize medals from exhibitions, the latest of which dates back to 1886. On the back of the seat, there is a sticker with an inscription in Polish that reads “Z Pradziwego Drzewa Bukowego”, which translates to “Made of real beech wood.”
The term Viennese furniture traditionally refers to the technique of bending wood with steam, a process that became popular in the mid-19th century thanks to the German and Austrian cabinet maker Michael Thonet. He not only succeeded in producing bent wood but also simplified the assembly process. Thanks to the use of bent elements, fewer connections were needed, which resulted in a stronger structure.
In 1869, Michael Thonet’s patent expired. In the 1870s the Polish company WOJCIECHOWA decided to replicate the success of the Austrian cabinet maker. After a fire in 1900, the company moved to Gmina Gomunice, where the museum exhibit was produced. The Polish company ceased operations in the early 1930s.
