Aeron Chair – Do The Figures Truly Stack Up?
When a young Dirk Jan DePree joined the Michigan based, Star Furniture Business in 1905, I consider we can safely assume that nobody, including the stated Mr DePree could have possibly predicted the furniture empire that he would eventually develop.
Nearly ninety years down the road would see his organization develop the iconic Aeron chair with sales soaring more than the two and a half million mark!
Back in 1923 D J DePree encouraged his father-in-law, Herman Miller, to purchase majority shares in the firm. Mr DePree then became the company’s 1st president and renamed it the Herman Miller Furniture Organization as a mark of respect for his father-in-law’s investment.
Top good quality furniture of innovative design would turn out to be synonymous with the name Herman Miller. Mention the name Aeron chair in furniture circles all through the planet nowadays and the name Herman Miller automatically precedes it.
Dirk Jan DePree’s association with a gentleman called Gilbert Rohde during the years of the excellent depression would in retrospect be observed as pivotal to the company’s future success. Up till this point the Herman Miller Furniture Firm had been producing regular style reproduction furniture. Mr Rohde could see that contemporary America was down-sizing and he encouraged Mr DePree to focus the company’s efforts towards these emerging contemporary tastes.
It was 1942 prior to the organization entered the office furniture market that would eventually lead to the ground breaking style of the Aeron chair.
The mid 1940′s saw D J DePree lose his erstwhile colleague and designer Gilbert Rohde. He was however replaced with the hugely talented George Nelson. Outside designers had been also employed which includes the exceptional Charles and Ray Eames.
D J DePree eventually retired in 1969 and handed the reins more than to his son Hugh DePree.
In 1970 Herman Miller went public but the world would still have to wait one more 24 years prior to the award-winning Aeron would make its entrance.
What a market entrance that turned out to be. Don Chadwick and the late Bill Stumpf had developed a chair that threw out all preconceived concepts of what a comfortable workplace chair really should look like.
Gone had been the previously accepted concepts of thick foam padding covered with fabric; replaced with a semi-transparent Pellicle weave material that truly permitted the physique to breathe throughout the warmer climate. The chair is constructed in 3 various sizes, A, B, and C, to accommodate the vast majority of men and women, with ‘B’ being a excellent fit for most folks.
The Herman Miller Aeron chair is created of curves and full of ergonomically created attributes – even the seat front has a ‘waterfall’ style to encourage very good circulation in your legs. It has facilities to adjust the seat height, tilt tension and tilt limiter, forward tilt, arm height, arm angle and PostureFit or Lumbar Assistance whichever assistance option you pick.
For these interested in earth-friendly concerns you’ll be pleased to note that this adjustable ergonomic chair is a massive 94% recyclable. You maybe even a lot more pleased to discover that it comes with a rather great 12 year warranty.
It’s an old saying that imitation is the sincerest kind of flattery – properly if that is correct then the Herman Miller Aeron chair has received more than its fair share of flattery – the Aeron design has been widely copied because its inception but 1 could say, in no way bettered.
Winner of the Style of the Decade Award in 1999 by Organization Week Magazine and Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), its innovative design earned it a permanent location in the New York Museum of Contemporary Art and with sales of this classic chair more than two and a half million and rising, you could ask the question, do the figures actually stack up?
I’ll let you determine.
Herman Miller Aeron Review
Herman Miller Aeron Review
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Cooper-Hewitt: Gilbert Rohde and Design Now – pt.1 of 3
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