The Indestructible Chair Needed Better Customers

In a 2008 photograph, an Emeco 1006 Navy Chair is chained to a pipe like a bicycle. That is an odd precaution for a chair built to endure salt air, fire, rough sailors and, according to its original military brief, the shock of a torpedo blast. The chain protects it from a threat its wartime designers did not plan for: somebody recognizing what it is.

The 1006 began as equipment. In 1944, Wilton C. Dinges and the Electrical Machine and Equipment Company developed a lightweight aluminum chair for the United States Navy. Its arched back, three vertical slats and shallow dip in the seat were plain enough for a ship, hospital or prison. Nothing about the shape asked to be admired. It was supposed to remain usable after the room around it had experienced a very bad day.

The smooth body hides how much work that required. The chair is assembled from separate pieces of recycled aluminum that are cut, formed, fitted and welded together. Workers grind most of the joints until the structure appears nearly seamless, leaving three small welds at the top of the back slats as a signature. Heat treatment strengthens the aluminum. Anodizing gives its surface resistance to corrosion and wear. The complete process takes 77 steps and roughly ten days at Emeco’s factory in Hanover, Pennsylvania.

The original customer created a strange business problem. The better the chair performed, the fewer replacements the government needed. Military demand eventually declined, and by the 1990s Emeco had a skeleton crew expecting the factory to close. A product capable of outliving its buyer had nearly outlived its maker.

Gregg Buchbinder took control of the company in 1998 and found the route out in its order files. An office manager was arguing over payment with Giorgio Armani. Other chairs had gone to designer Terence Conran and hotel operator Ian Schrager. Architects and tastemakers had already noticed that the same stripped-down object used in government rooms looked unusually sharp in restaurants and hotels. Buchbinder stopped treating those orders as a curiosity and began pursuing them as a market.

Philippe Starck helped turn that accidental audience into a second life. After meeting Buchbinder at the 1998 International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Starck developed the Hudson chair, a polished descendant of the 1006 made for Schrager’s Hudson Hotel in New York. Emeco delivered 1,000 in 2000. Each took eight hours to polish until a military material looked closer to jewelry. When the hotel closed in 2022, Buchbinder said the chairs found new homes. The furniture had outlasted another building.

This rescue is easy to admire and slightly awkward. Design culture preserved a factory, a difficult manufacturing process and skilled jobs. It also turned a plain government chair into an expensive status object. Cheaper copies spread the silhouette while skipping much of the work that gave the original its strength. Longevity became a premium feature in a market that usually makes replacement easier than patience.

The original 1006 remains in production with a lifetime warranty. Its recycled aluminum and long service life give it a straightforward environmental case, but physical strength was only the beginning of its survival. The factory needed buyers willing to fund the process, and the chair needed new rooms that still wanted its severe old shape. It moved from warships to prisons, hotels, galleries and sidewalks without becoming a different object. The aluminum lasted first. Its reputation had to catch up.