Café Herr Hase

Thonet furniture in Münster’s new Herr Hase café

Viennese coffee house culture can now be experienced in the recently opened Herr Hase café in the German city of Münster. Located in a building dating from 1907 with high ceilings, arched windows and decorative tiles, the café has been completely redesigned by Studio eto. Delicious coffee and classic coffee house furniture await its visitors. By opting for both traditional and contemporary bentwood chairs from Thonet, the client and architect have placed equal value on aesthetics, functionality and durability.

The starting point when it came to the furniture were the bentwood chairs 209 and 214 (formerly No. 14), the archetypal Thonet bentwood chair from 1859.  This is the chair that marked the beginning of modern furniture. The technique for bending solid wood perfected by Michael Thonet in the 1850s paved the way for the first serial production. Thanks to the quality of the piece and its timeless aesthetics, the 214 is a very durable chair and easy to repair. The elegant 209 bentwood armchair has also been used in the Herr Hase café in a stained black beech version with a Viennese canework seat. Its shape appears minimalist yet organic, almost like a sculpture.

All of the other chairs in the café are also from Thonet, but are new interpretations of the bentwood classic. Minimalist, authentic and sophisticated: the 118 chair family is a contemporary take on the Thonet classic, paying tribute to the company’s heritage while also taking it a step further. Designer Sebastian Herkner has added refined details that make the chair less dominant and at the same time more distinguished. The shape of the chair legs is another particular feature. They are rounded at the back with straight edges at the front, picking up the horseshoe shape of the seat base. The seat frame itself is also made of bentwood. In the Herr Hase café, this design can be found in an elegant barstool, the 118 H, as well as in a cosy chair trio – with and without armrests (118 and 118 F) – grouped around the small bistro tables.  

Sleek tubular steel furniture, again from Thonet, rounds out the furnishings of this new coffee house in Münster. The B 10, a slim, elongated sidetable designed by Marcel Breuer, has also been chosen for the café, with a stained black beech tabletop to match the chairs. The lower B 97 sidetables, a 1930s design, can be positioned over the bench seating along the windows, for a practical, space-saving solution.