A lowly warship chair became a cultural American icon

April 19, 2016

It was just a chair. Meant to be stacked. Style never entered the picture. The Emeco, Electric Machine and Equipment Company, model ten-oh-six, circa 1944, Hanover, PA. Built for war from scrap aluminum – no hardware, all welded. Built to survive tumultuous salty seas and torpedoes, and built to last for 150 years. Because in war, you just never know. It wasn’t always cool. It wasn’t meant for trendy coffee shops or the ultra hip cafes of tech campuses. It was all but forgotten after the Second World War, relegated to prisons, hospitals, and Brutalist government edifices. By the mid 90’s, Emeco almost shut its doors for good. Called it a day. That’s until Giorgio Armani came calling and then Coca Cola, Philippe Starck, and even Hollywood. Did the chair that parked the butts of a thousand sailors suddenly reinvent itself? It didn’t need to because from the beginning, it always had legs to stand on.