A barber chair in a recreation of J. N. Hooper's Barber Shop (Seattle, WA circa 1880s) at the Museum of History and Industry A barber chair is a chair for customers to a barber or hairdresser. The chairs usually have adjustable height (with a foot-operated jack or a hand-operated lever on the side). It can also rotate, or lean backwards (for hairwashing and shaving). They are normally made from metal and leather and are usually rather heavy. On the low end for cheaper barber chairs, the cost can be around $500, whereas higher-end barber chairs with more advanced features like adjustable headrests and leg rests, reclining capabilities and more sturdy building materials typically cost up to $2500. In 2015, barber chairs being used as decoration in a restaurant in Phoenix. Barber chairs in engravings from the Civil War era share many features with modern chairs, including high seating, upholstery, and a footrest.[1] The first factory-manufactured chairs date to around 1850.
[1] The first one-piece reclining barber chair with an attached footrest was patented in 1878[2] by the Archer Company of Saint Louis.[3] Archer quickly followed it with a chair that raised and lowered mechanically. Eugene Berninghaus of Cincinnati improved on Archer's design with the first reclining and revolving chair, the Paragon.[1] Theodore Koch of Chicago incorporated all of these innovations into his chairs, selling more than 35,000 chairs in the period before 1885. In 1897, Samuel Kline (of the Kline Chair Company)[4][5] patented a chair[6] and filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Theodore Koch in 1905 (but was overturned).[7] In 1904, Kline filed a patent for an "adjustable chair" which was granted in 1907. Barack Obama's bulletproof glass-encased barber chair at Hyde Park Hair Salon in Chicago In 1900, Ernest Koken, a German immigrant, created a hydraulic-operated chair and also patented the "joystick" side lever, which allowed a barber to control all the mechanical functions.
In the late 1950s, US-based barber chair manufactures sold about 10,000 chairs a year to the 100,000 barber shops.[9] Chicago-based Emil J. Paidar Company was a leading manufacturer of barber chairs in the late 1950s (Belmont and American Barber Chair Company from 1948 to 1956 whose chairs were spinoffs of the Koken chair).[] Starting in 1957, Belmont joined Osaka,[] Japan's Takara Belmont Company began importing almost exact duplicates of Paidar chairs—at 20%-30% less cost.[9] In June 1969 Takara purchased the Koken Barber Chair building and production equipment in St. Louis Mo and in 1970 they purchased the Koken name, trademarks and patents this purchase was the main reason that by 1970, Takara had 70% of the US market, beating out Paidar who once held the same amount. One-chair or single-chair barbershops are small, usually independent, barbershops that have only one barber chair available to customers. This is an older tradition in the barbering business that is slowly fading out as the last generation of barbers begins to retire and few younger barbers step up to fill the roles.
One-chair barbershops serve one customer at a time and provide a one-on-one barber experience, whereas multi-chair barbershops serve many clients at once and get clients in and out faster, so they can make more money by serving more clients concurrently. Some salons have also incorporated the single-chair barbershop model into their businesses. ^ a b c d e f Do bald men get half-price haircuts?: in search of Americas' great barbershops, Vince Staten, Simon & Schuster, 2001, p. 95, 176pp, ISBN 978-0-684-86745-8 (retrieved 16 August 2010 from Google Books) ^ 1873 according to patent #D6648, DESIGN FOR BARBERS AND DENTISTS CHAIRS, George W. and Robert W. Archer, issued 13 May 1873 (retrieved 17 August 2010 at Google Patents) ^ a b Where Men Hide, James B. Twitchell, Ken Ross; Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 110-1, 248pp, ISBN 978-0-231-13735-5 (retrieved 16 August 2010 from Google Books) ^ Advertisement, The Barbers' Journal, Volumes 13, Number 1, Journeymen Barbers' International Union of America, January 1902 (retrieved 2 September 2010 from Google Books)
^ Genealogical and Personal Memorial of Mercer County, New Jersey, Volume 1, Francis Bazley Lee (editor), Lewis Publishing Company, 1907, p. 292-3 (retrieved 2 September 2010 from Google Books) ^ Design for a chair, Samuel Kline, patent #D26623, filed 20 October 1896, granted 9 February 1897 ^ Kline Chair Co. v. Theo. A Kochs & Son et al., The Federal Reporter: Cases argued and determined in the circuit and district courts of the United States, Volume 138, West Publishing Company, 1905 (retrieved 2 September 2010 from Google Books)> ^ Adjustable chair, Samuel Kline, patent #862565, filed 20 July 1904, granted 6 August 1907 ^ a b c Japan: The Great Barber-Chair Coup, Time, 10 August 1970 (retrieved 17 August 2010) ^ History of the One-Chair BarbershopIn the course of his storied career, churned out thousands of pen-and-ink caricatures of celebrities — the final half-century’s worth while sitting in an old barber chair at a worn drafting table in the fourth-floor studio of his townhouse on East 95th Street.
Over the years, Mr. Hirschfeld’s cushioned chair became as much a part of his legend as his long-lined style. “You have the whole history of the performing arts in the 20th century immortalized in just this table and chair,” said David Leopold, archivist of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. “It was the crucible that it all passed through.” The chair and desk remained undisturbed over the eight years since Mr. Hirschfeld’s death in 2003, as if in mourning. But now they are on the move. Mr. Hirschfeld’s widow, Louise Hirschfeld Cullman, has remarried and is selling the house. And she has donated the desk and chair and some other items to the New York Public Library, which will display them beginning Wednesday in the lobby of its Library for the Performing Arts branch in Lincoln Center, where Mr. Hirschfeld regularly did research for his drawings. The branch’s executive director, Jacqueline Z. Davis, said the library would rotate sets of Hirschfeld prints on display with the desk and chair.
Last Wednesday, the movers came for Mr. Hirschfeld’s immortal furniture. In his studio, as she waited for the movers to take it all away — the desk, the chair, the pens and the dried-up inkwell — Mrs. Hirschfeld Cullman, 74, a theater historian who married Mr. Hirschfeld in 1996, praised his drawing seat as “a predecessor to the ergonomic chair.” “It turned around,” she said. “It had various positions. He could take a nap when he wanted to, and it was very comfortable for him to work in.” Since Mr. Hirschfeld moved into the house in 1948, there have actually been two chairs. When he set up his studio, he put in a heavy oak drawing table with a broad, slanted top, and a side cabinet that held his pen and inkwell. Since he spent nearly every day drawing, even weekends, he searched for the most comfortable seat, and found it in an old-fashioned barber chair at a used furniture shop on the Bowery. By the 1990s, the chair had become so decrepit that “I thought we were going to lose Al Hirschfeld to tetanus,” said Mr. Leopold of the Hirschfeld foundation.
“His old chair had springs coming out — I really thought we were going to lose this national treasure to something really simple,” he said. Mr. Hirschfeld agreed to replace the chair in 1993, with one that had been used in a shop in the Chrysler Building. All that remains of the earlier Bowery barber chair is the base, which is on display at the Manhattan gallery of Margo Feiden, whose gallery has represented Mr. Hirschfeld since 1969. The desk’s drawing surface was also pretty beat up, from years of Mr. Hirschfeld cutting his own thick matte paper on it – to the point that its once flat, wooden surface now resembles, Mr. Leopold’s word, “corduroy.” Facing the drawing table was a long couch where friends would sit and visit while he drew. There were several bookcases jammed with volumes on topics as diverse as art and motor parts. Taped to the walls were numerous unfinished sketches, including the pianists Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz. A large bulletin board was covered with yellowed articles, letters and photographs dating back decades.
All that was missing was Mr. Hirschfeld in his drawing uniform: bedroom slippers and blue mechanic’s jumpsuit. The movers came in. After much wrapping and taping and strategizing, they lifted the barber chair, leaving a rusty ring of a reminder on the worn black tile floor. “It’s like Giotto’s circle,” marveled Mr. Leopold, alluding to the 14th-century Italian painter who drew a perfect freehand circle. The movers lugged the chair down the narrow stairway and on the second floor, got jammed between the banister and the wall decorated with wallpaper made in 1965 from a Hirschfeld illustration of a room full of celebrities – Chaplin, Einstein, Monroe, Groucho, Sinatra. The workers were also perilously close to Mr. Hirschfeld’s Steinway. Just as they struggled to lift the chair over the banister, a thick, black liquid began dripping from the chair — apparently hydraulic fluid leftover from the Chrysler Building shop.Mr. Leopold crowed as movers raced to protect the carpet.