On with the history basics of the white plastic chair. We have identified the first monobloc but had not reached the realms of mass production yet. This stage is entered by Charles & Ray Eames with Zenith Plastics and Herman Miller in the late 1940ies/early 1950ies.

The Eames chairs are well documented and widely published. The chairs come with various shell designs and bases:

Conventional wisdom holds that these designs by Charles & Ray Eames from the late 1940ies are the very first examples of plastic chairs. We dare to disagree for two reasons:
Firstly, there is not a single all-plastic chair among this series. The chairs all have metal or wooden bases while only the seat shell consists of re-inforced fiber glass, i.e. several layers of a woven material are molded onto a model, glued and stiffened with appropriate adhesives.
This brings us to a second point: Compared to injection molding, manufacturing these shells is a rather labour-intensive process involving raw material that doesn´t exactly come cheap. I even doubt that the fiberglass seats ever were cheaper to produce than traditional solid wood chairs.

One of the foremost qualities of the plastic chair though is its low manufacturing costs. The Eames chairs are certainly beautiful and a ground-breaking innovation paving the way for new designs but still far from THE plastic chair that dominate patios around the world.

Next is Saarinen and his wonderful Tulip Chairs or Robin Day´s economical and hugely succesful injection-molded Polyprop chair.

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