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What timeframe are these chairs?

p51

One Too Many
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1,119
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Well behind the front lines!
IMG_3672.JPG

Just wondering what timeframe chairs like this would have been first made?
Would these have been seen in the WW2 era? I saw lots of them growing up in the area my parents are from, all the old timers had them. But I've always wondered when they started making these.
I just found some as O scale models that i want to use on my planned model train layout, but don't want to have anything that didn't exist in the 1943 timeframe the layout depicts...
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
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4,254
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Gopher Prairie, MI
Murray Ohio, a firm which produced automotive stampings (fenders, fuel tanks, running boards and body sections) and later bicycles, toy cars, and lawn care equipment began stampings a manufacturer of lawn chairs in 1934. The metal lawn chairs first appear in the home magazines and various catalogs around this time. They became a popular mass market product by the summer of 1941, but of course supply was severely limited due to national defense material restrictions already in place at that time. The market for these sturdy chairs exploded after the War. They were practically ubiquitous in the late 1940's and early 1950's. By the late '50's, though, they had largely been supplanted by the rather less satisfactory folding aluminum chairs with the web seats and backs.
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
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2,808
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Cobourg
Is there a name for this style of chair?

Later................

a web search tells me they are "metal lawn chairs" and they are still for sale although a little pricey, $69.99 for the Parklane to $169 for the Riviera.
 
Last edited:

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
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4,254
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Gopher Prairie, MI
This is an example of Viktor Schreckingost's 1939 redesign of the stamped steel lawn chair:

A couple hundred thousand of these were sold by Murray before production was curtailed for the War. There were a number of firms manufacturing these chairs before the War, differing in detail but not in substance. Mid-thirties chairs usually punched out backs, in imitation of woven cane. The "Shell Back" chair was, in the style of the one that you show in your picture, I think, a largely post-war product.
 

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