#Webbed aluminum folding lawn chairs portable#

Why change it? It's a design so revered, that it's recognized by the Museum of Modern Art-in fact, they sell the chair in their official store, right along Arne Jacobsen's famed Egg Chair and the Eames Lounge Chair. They're handsome chairs that look a whole lot like the ones that were being cranked out half a century ago. This is still all done by hand to ensure the exact tension needed for a comfortable sit. The most time-consuming part of the process, Pokrandt says, is weaving the fade-resistant webbing onto the seat and back in a hardwearing T-bar design. Sturdy aluminum tubes are cut to length and then placed into a bender before getting punched with holes to assemble the folding mechanism. Today, they make dozens of different styles and designs from their small factory in Florida. They fired up production on the webbing again and started cranking out their version of the nostalgic chairs. It was clear that the demand was there, so the Pokrandts bought some old production equipment from a former client to create aluminum frames. But when chair manufacturing moved overseas, business all but dried up. “When these chairs were very popular, most of the webbing came from my grandfather's factory,” he says. Pokrandt's grandfather owned a company that made plastic yarn and waterproof webbing. Gary Pokrandt officially founded Lawn Chair USA with his son Andrew in 2009, but lawn chairs have been something of a family business for generations. Those imitations of the real deal is ultimately what lead to one small company reviving the chairs. Inside Lawn Chair USA's Florida workshop. The affordability, usefulness and minimalist style of the design made the chairs a ubiquitous household staple.

#Webbed aluminum folding lawn chairs portable#

The chair's shape and interwoven fabric webbing were eventually refined and by the late 1950s, the Fredric Arnold Company was manufacturing more than 14,000 of these portable chairs each day from its Brooklyn factory. His original design in 1947 was more crude and less sturdy than today's metal folding chairs, but was it was influenced by the stripped-down utilitarian designs of the early mid-century modern period. A former P-38 combat fighter pilot named Fredric Arnold came up with the idea of streamlining an existing collapsible chair that had been used for decades in schools and churches. It was actually a WWII veteran turned inventor who designed the original lawn chair. Turns out, narrow aluminum tubing was great for making chairs. After the war, manufacturers sought other uses for the strong yet lightweight material. Aluminum production soared during the war, since it was used in the structural framing of military aircraft.

The rise of this all-American staple coincided with the growth of suburbs after World War II, when homes with larger lawns were suddenly more affordable. I wonder how many Fourth of July fireworks have been admired from the webbed seat of a classic aluminum lawn chair? How many great summer memories from your youth are punctuated with the sound of those chairs being snapped open? Lightweight and durable, the portable chairs are carted to campouts and tailgates, backyard barbecues and beaches. The folding lawn chair is an American summertime classic.