Industrialization, with its new manufacturing techniques and materials began to supplant the traditional turner's and woodcarver's crafts in furniture-making. Long before Michael Thonet's first experiments with bent wood the use of iron had led to important innovations in this field. As early as 1736 an armaments manufacturer established by tsar Peter the Great started to produce large quantities of furniture made of cast iron.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a Prussian master builder, also used the cast iron process to rationalize furniture production. It was Schinkel's architectural work in particular which earned him the reputation of one of the major exponents of German »classicism«, but his work as a furniture designer was also of great significance. His elegant interpretations of the »classics« produced designs of formal austerity for all kinds of different purposes. Schinkel's designs included not only wooden furniture but also, at the beginning of the 19th century, large numbers of iron trestle tables, garden furniture and other items of furniture.