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Object Timeline
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1935 |
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2015 |
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2025 |
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Airline Chair
This is a chair. It is dated 1935. Its medium is birch, ash, naugahyde, steel tacks. It is a part of the Product Design and Decorative Arts department.
In 1927 Kem Weber opened his own industrial design studio in Hollywood where he conceived of this Airline chair. One of the strongest statements in American furniture of the streamlined style, the Airline chair has a raked profile and an angular frame whose arm supports and armrests reach forward while the chair’s elongated seat and low back appear ready to launch their sitter into the sky. In its name and style, the chair associated itself with the latest developments in modern transportation. The sculptural quality of the plywood arms and armrests can also be interpreted as a precursor to the biomorphic furniture of Charles and Ray Eames.
With this chair Weber aimed to marry comfort, beauty, utility and affordability. The designer conceived of the chair for mass-production and the first models were constructed in collapsible parts so that they could be assembled at home. Unable to secure a manufacturer, Weber founded the Airline Chair Company and produced the chairs, likely in collaboration with a local cabinetmaker, according to the specifications of particular orders. Disney ordered about three-hundred upholstered Airline chairs in 1935 for use in their studio offices and screening rooms at their Burbank animation studios, for which Weber was the project architect.
This object was
donated by
George R. Kravis II.
It is credited Gift of George R. Kravis II.
- Model number 41 Armchair
- plywood, birch.
- 2008-5-1
- Long Chair Chair
- birch (frame), birch-faced plywood (seat).
- Museum purchase through gift of George R. Kravis II, Anonymous Donor, and....
- 2013-17-1
- Model MR534 Lounge Chair
- bent nickel-plated tubular steel, cane.
- Gift of the David Teiger Trust.
- 2016-36-7
Our curators have highlighted 6 objects that are related to this one. Here are three of them, selected at random:
- Armchair, Kem Weber Group
- painted wood with synthetic leather.
- Lent by The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Fund....
- 48.2016.14
- Circular Cocktail Tray Tray
- silver plated, nickel, rosewood.
- Gift of George R. Kravis II.
- 2018-22-31
- B5 Side Chair
- bent chrome-plated tubular steel, eisengarn (parafin treated cotton canvas).
- Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund.
- 2007-9-1
Its dimensions are
H x W x D: 78.1 × 62.2 × 86.4 cm (30 3/4 in. × 24 1/2 in. × 34 in.)
It has the following markings
"8037" [in cream paint]/" [illegible] E-15" [in red crayon], on underside of seat
Cite this object as
Airline Chair; birch, ash, naugahyde, steel tacks; H x W x D: 78.1 × 62.2 × 86.4 cm (30 3/4 in. × 24 1/2 in. × 34 in.); Gift of George R. Kravis II; 2018-22-28
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
