Kaplan 1934

A Family Who Kept Their Craft Alive Through War, Regime, and Renewal

In the forested hills of the Orlické Mountains, where beech trees grow slowly in the cold mountain air, the Kaplan family has been shaping wood into furniture for four generations. Their story begins in 1934, when joiner Karel Kaplan made his very first chair.

By the late 1930s, Karel had grown his workshop into a small team. But the war interrupted everything. When he was conscripted to the front, his wife Pavla kept the workshop alive in the only way she could: by turning their workshop hands to coffin making. After the war came a brief revival until the Communist regime arrived. Workshops across the region were swallowed by collectivisation. Tools, machines, and livelihoods were seized.

Pavla burned every document that could endanger the family. Karel continued working anyway – quietly, stubbornly – on machines that no longer belonged to him, helped by his son, who spent his life prototyping furniture on confiscated equipment.

When communism fell in the late 1980s, Karel’s grandson Pavel rebuilt what had nearly been erased. Before constructing his own home, he built a new workshop beside his grandfather’s cottage. He gathered a handful of craftsmen from nearby villages and began again. This time openly, proudly.

In the 2000s, Kaplan gained a new breath of life through Lukáš, the founder’s great-grandson. With deep knowledge of wood and an instinct for design, he introduced precise modern technologies while fiercely protecting the integrity of handcraft. Under his leadership, Kaplan transformed from a quiet regional workshop into one of Central Europe’s most respected makers of solid-wood tables and chairs, celebrated at design fairs and awarded across the continent.

Furniture Built to Last as Long as the Trees Themselves

Kaplan builds its furniture on a simple belief: a chair or table should last at least as long as the tree it came from.

Their work begins long before a chair is drawn or a table is sketched… It begins in the forests of the Orlické Mountains and the Polabí region, where the family has sourced oak and beech for generations.

“Our furniture comes from the trees that grow in the forests of the Orlické Mountains, the same hills where our children learn to ski.”

Each log is selected on site, with Kaplan craftsmen present during the felling to oversee how the trunks and planks are handled. Wood holds tension, and poor handling can cause internal damage that no amount of skill can later undo.

The wood is then sawn and laid to rest outdoors, air-drying for up to three years in the cold mountain air before being kiln-dried with heat generated from the workshop’s own offcuts. Only then is it stable enough to begin its second life.

“We sort and assess every trunk on the spot. Even then, we already know what each tree is destined to become.”

Inside the workshop, every board is examined for knots, cracks, and hidden tensions. Each part of a future chair or table is cut from the exact place on the plank where its strength will be greatest. This instinct, knowing where a leg should sit,  cannot be automated. It comes from decades of reading wood the way others read a map.

A Kaplan piece owes its strength to traditional mortise-and-tenon joinery secured with glue, the same method the family has relied on since 1934. In this construction, one piece of wood fits into another like a key into a lock, creating an internal bond that resists movement for decades. It’s why Kaplan chairs never loosen or wobble. Every piece arrives fully constructed, tested, and ready to serve for generations.

Before final finishing, the furniture is shaped by hand one last time. Here, it is the eye and the touch that guide the work, smoothing edges, balancing curves, and revealing the natural calm of the wood. The final surface is either a matte lacquer for exceptional durability or a natural oil that brings out the scent, texture, and soul of the oak.

Only then does the wood step fully into its new purpose.

Furniture That Marries Everyday Life with Lasting Beauty

Kaplan’s design language grows from a constant negotiation between form and function. Designers push for elegance and lightness, while four generations of craftsmen anchor every idea in the realities of wood, joinery, and long-term durability. Each new piece takes a full year to develop: months refining proportions, ergonomics, and balance, followed by months teaching the CNC machine to reproduce that precision before the craftsmen take over.

Their extendable tables capture this harmony beautifully. Despite their weight, the tops slide open with one hand, moving on perfectly engineered tracks that remain hidden beneath a seamless grain. The mechanism is so smooth it feels almost choreographed – a quiet dance of craft and design.

“A larger surface sets off also the texture of the wood beautifully. With angular designs, the texture is visible in one direction of the cut, while with rounded and shaped pieces, the material will stand out in different directions and reveal original figure.”

Rounded edges, soft curves, and carefully shaped seats make Kaplan furniture practical for family life: safe for children, comfortable for long lunches, and timeless in silhouette. Collections like Elica and Libra blend soft curves with precise joinery, drawing inspiration from the forests and rural architecture of the Orlické Mountains. Their style feels calm, balanced, and intentionally unhurried, timeless not because it imitates tradition, but because it respects how people live.

Kaplan designs are proof that durability and beauty can be one and the same: practical enough for everyday use, refined enough to become heirlooms.

Keeping a Family Promise, One Table at a Time

What the Kaplans pass on isn’t just a craft, it’s a way of seeing the world. Four generations have built furniture with the belief that durability is a form of respect: respect for the tree, for the craftsperson, and for the families who will live with the piece for decades.

This philosophy shapes everything they do. The younger generation has brought Kaplan onto the international design stage, but the heart of the workshop hasn’t changed: careful making, honest materials, and a responsibility toward the forests and communities around them.

“Each table we make in Orličky has to last as long as it takes for a new tree to grow, a century, a generation. Thanks to that, the forest never disappears from the mountains. A tree is forever.”

Their wood comes from the same Orlické forests where their children learned to ski,  a daily reminder that misusing the land would harm the very future they are working for. They don’t need sustainability certificates to prove their approach; the next generation itself keeps them accountable. Kaplan’s work endures because it is made with care for both people and place.