Lawn Chair USA was founded in 2009 to bring back classic, American-made folding aluminum webbed lawn chairs – the kind that your grandparents (and probably great-grand parents) used at countless backyard BBQs in the 1950s and 1960s.
Many of us grew up attending family get togethers in suburban backyards punctuated by balls being kicked around, kids running after each other, the crackle of the radio in the background, smoke from the BBQ, and of course, the array of aluminum lawn chairs with their brightly colored woven patterns.
Aluminum lawn chairs became a staple of every suburban backyard in the United States by the 1960s and 1970s. Image courtesy of the Bendix Family Archive.
A History Speedrun: The Aluminum Lawn Chair
The classic aluminum lawn chair owes its existence to World War II, and to a Lockheed P-38 Lightning combat fighter pilot named Fredric Arnold. Aluminum production had soared during the war to levels that had never been seen before, and as a result of the economies of scale, it had become relatively inexpensive.
Aluminum was being used for aircraft production in vast quantities during WWII, and in the years after the conflict ended there was much work being done to find new products that could be made from the material.
As a result of this we got stacking aluminum camp cups and mugs, aluminum cutlery, aluminum boats, aluminum pots, pans, and baking trays, aluminum siding and roofing, aluminum foil, aluminum cans, and of course, aluminum lawn chairs.
The lawn chairs were designed to use simple aluminum tubing that was bent into shape, closely matching the design of pre-WWII wooden folding chairs. The aluminum made them far lighter, and far more resilient.
Fredric Arnold’s design was simple but brilliant, it incorporated simple plastic armrests, and brightly colored woven seats and seat backs that seemed to come in almost every color combination imaginable. These lawn chairs became a mid-century design staple, and they became a background feature in many of the most important events of the era, from July 4th fireworks, to use in motor racing pits, to the crowds watching the launch of Apollo 11 to the Moon in 1969.
This is the original Fredric Arnold patent drawing for the aluminum lawn chair. As you can see, the design did evolve somewhat over the first few years of production. Image courtesy of the Fredric Arnold Company.
By the time the 1950s were drawing to a close, the Fredric Arnold Company was making close to 15,000 lawn chairs per day in their Brooklyn factory, and sending them all around the country, and around the world.
It seemed for a time like every suburban American house had an assortment of them in various colors, and they became popular with campers, hunters, anglers, bird watchers, and many others. As the 1990s dawned those spindly-legged nylon folding chairs with their floppy cup holders took over the market overnight, and the time of the aluminum lawn chair seemed to be over.
In 2009 a man named Gary Pokrandt founded Lawn Chair USA to bring the classic aluminum chairs back into production. Interestingly, Pokrandt’s grandfather had run a factory that made the waterproof webbing used on the original lawn chairs, and so they were uniquely qualified to bring the chairs back to life.
Demand was staggeringly high and Lawn Chair USA now produces a vast array of different colors, styles, and sizes – all made in the USA by American workers, using many of the same methods and techniques that were first implemented back in the 1950s.
The Classic Lawn Chair
Lawn Chair USA now makes three key sizes of lawn chair, the Classic Chair, the Beach Chair, and the Magnum Chair. The Classic is essentially the same fundamental design that your grandparents had, and it comes with all the same bright patterned webbing options.
The designs from Lawn Chair USA include all the classic bright color schemes from years gone by, as well as more minimalist modern color schemes, like simple black and white versions.
Each Classic weighs 4.2 lbs and has an 18.5” width seat, with a 32″ fold flat height, and it can be ordered with a clip-on cupholder for the armrest. We’ve shown some of the color options above and below, but there are dozens more on the main store page.
These chairs are designed to last a lifetime, in fact many have lasted longer and become accidental family heirlooms due to the fact they don’t rust and never seem to wear out. If you’d like to visit Lawn Chair USA and choose your own, you can visit the store here.
Images courtesy of Lawn Chair USA
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.