We're located in the center of Historic Open: 10 am - 6 pm Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday Vintage Metal Porch Gliders and Chairs Wrought Iron Patio Furniture We buy, restore, and sell! We will restore your personal items including metal or iron. Check out our Store & Showroom Antiques, Collectibles, Vintage, Repurposed Visit Our Facebook Page Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames.Three Piece Cast Iron Rose Pattern Garden Set Vintage Iron Patio Table with Tempered Glass Top 1950's Metal Patio End Tables Vintage Wrought Iron & Glass Table Set of Four Iron Indoor/Outdoor ChairsHomecrest Takes Survival of the Fittest to Revival of the Fittest - Wadena, MN has been home for the Homecrest Outdoor Living furniture manufacturer for nearly 60 years. Homecrest's Vintage Wire collection is still gracing the patios of many homes! How many outdoor furniture manufacturers can say that!
These pieces contain the Bottemiller swivel rocker mechanism, patented in 1956, that was the foundation of Homecrest's outdoor furniture line. For over ten years (1960-1970's) the all welded steel construction with smooth eight ball swivel bearings, time tested floating comfort rocker springs, roll away base, baked on enamel over bonderized steel was manufactured. With all of that said, no wonder it's still out there today! Just as old classic American cars have withstood the outdoor elements, so has claims to a truly 'green' story with the Vintage Wire collection. Now over 40 years old, Homecrest's Vintage Wire collection, has continually livened up patios all across the United States. They are proud to display the 'Made in the USA' tag on all of their durable collection pieces.Wood Alternative Patio Glider Bench God Bless America Patio Bench Light House and Sail Boats Patio Park Bench Easterly Steel Black Outdoor Bench Oak Heights Patio Bench with Cushion Insert (Slipcovers Sold Separately)
Yacht Club 60 in. Vintage Lantern Patio Bench Oak Heights Patio Bench with Cashew Cushion Florence Wood Inlay Patio Park Bench Commack Brown Wicker Outdoor Bench Blue Hill All-Weather Distressed Grey Eucalyptus Wood Patio Bench Malibu 4 ft. Backless Patio Bench Outdoor Patio Glider BenchNatural Wood Tone Patio Park BenchL x 17 in. W x 16 in. H White Vinyl Patio Park Bench Antique Bronze Cast Aluminum Patio Bench Adelaide 2-Seater Outdoor Bench Potter 50 in. 2-Person Black Outdoor Bench Fleur De Lis Metal Patio Bench Alveranda Metal Outdoor Bench with Periwinkle Cushion Wine Tasting Patio Park Bench Dumas 45 in. 2-Person Natural Oak Finish Outdoor Bench Woodbury Patio Bench with Chili Cushion Renaissance 4 ft. Patio Bench Durable and classic, vintage iron furniture is built to last. Wrought Iron Dining SetWrought Iron Dining SetLong prized for its sturdiness and craftsmanship, wrought-iron outdoor furniture is bent and hammered into shape by hand — unlike mold-made cast-iron items, whose parts are bolted together (and whose seams are sometimes visible).
Blacksmiths in America popularized wrought iron during the 1920s, and it remained in vogue until the Eisenhower era, when lighter, cheaper, rust-proof aluminum caught on.Pictured: This early-20th-century Salterini dining set has substantial curved feet that don't sink into the ground. Maintenance: Once a YearMaintenance: Once a YearAlthough it's strong enough to sit outside year-round, wrought-iron furniture rusts easily. Inspect your furniture every year, and if you see any rust, sand it away and cover the spot with primer and paint. (Painting an antique won't diminish its value.) Even if no corrosion is visible, protect the iron with a coat of marine varnish. The Alphabet Cross-Stitch Sampler 8 Old Things in Your Home That Are Actually Worth Money Now The Collector's Guide to Vintage Christmas Tablecloths 8 Surprising Household Items That Are Worth a Fortune Everything But the House Is the Best Vintage Site You've Never Heard Of 6 Tips That Will Make You a Better Junker
5 of the Most Haunted Items Ever Sold on eBay This Woman Was Shocked By What She Found At an Ohio Flea Market The 13 Most Popular Engagement Rings on Pinterest The Collector's Guide to Vintage Halloween Decorations The Forgotten History of Those Iconic National Parks PostersTest Drive: A Long Weekend With Lamborghini's RWD Huracán Spyder Breckenridge Brewery and Belfast’s Boundary Debut New Nitro Dry Irish Stout The True Story of ‘Unlocking the Cage’: The Latest Fight for Animal Rights Why Running Isn't Helping You Lose Weight Pappy Van Winkle Releasing a Super-Limited 25-Year-Old Bourbon Want a Better Bratwurst? Just Add Pimento Cheese Partying With YETI: A Sneak Peek Inside the Cooler Company's New Clubhouse Is Everything Better in Boulder? The Lost History of the American Lawn Chair Amidst the iconic signs of summertime in the USA — the cold brew from the cooler, the grill, the sweating pitcher of lemonade, the checkered picnic blanket — one object is all too often overlooked: the lawn chair.
That throne of the outdoors is an omnipresent figure in beaches and backyards, parked in driveways and alongside parade routes, and positioned under multicolored umbrellas across every state. The lawn chair comes in many shapes and materials, including the omnipresent white stacking kind popular poolside, but if you ask lawn chair historian and furniture maker Louis "Skip" Torrans, he'll tell you that there's only one true classic: The cantilevered stamped steel model. The metal lawn chair goes by many nicknames: the Shellback, the Tulip chair, the Clamshell, the Motel Chair, and the Bouncer. But even if none of those ring a bell, you’ve probably seen one. They're the kind that might have been in a corner of your childhood best friend’s garage or your great-aunt’s lake house. "It's just a traditional chair," Torrans says in a North Texas accent. "It's a singular item. They're like hamburgers and hot dogs. You don’t have to teach anybody what they are." Torrans became fascinated with the history of the steel lawn chair after cobbling together his own version of it in the early 2000s.
He engineered a mixture between the classic wooden Adirondack chair and an old steel chair frame, and was surprised at the reaction. "People kept coming up to me and acting like they already knew the chairs,” he recalled. “There was something familiar to them." Soon, Torrans and his wife, Kathy, began manufacturing their version of the old steel lawn chairs that he remembered from his youth, and Torrans began researching their origins by flipping through archives of advertisements. From his research, he published a book, A History of the Metal Lawn Chair. As best as he can tell, what we know as the metal lawn chair began in the '30s. "Somewhere around '35 to '38, there were some flat metal chairs in a metal frame. They didn't really have a design to them, but they had the basic shape of the metal lawn chair." One possible source of the metal lawn chair as we know it is a design by Leo Jiranek, an industrial and furniture designer who contributed concepts to the likes of Ethan Allen and, in the 1960s, was the president of the Jiranek School of Furniture Design and Technology in Manhattan.
During the course of his research, Torrans found a hand-drawn print that Jiranek did in the late ‘30s that came close to what we know of as the classic metal lawn chair. The rise of the lawn chair has much to do with the growth of the suburbs after the Second World War, when the 1944 GI bill and other legislation made owning a single family home with a backyard much more accessible to middle-class Americans. With the increase in lawns came an increase in demand for lawn furniture. Into that gap stepped the first major player in the world of metal lawn chairs. The Warmack Company, founded by sheet metal fabricator and Arkansas manufacturer Ed Warmack, began making steel gliders, tables, and lawn chairs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and swiftly turned into the largest metal outdoor furniture manufacturer in the USA, with some of their lines carried exclusively by Sears. Then, in 1954, Flanders Industries, founded by Dudley Flanders, bought the Warmack Company, and continued making those same steel chairs until 1996, when the market became dominated by plastic-based lawn furniture.
Torrans picked up pretty close to where Flanders left off, making vintage-inspired steel furniture from 2002 on. Their models include the classic rounded-back chair, as well as the Thunderbird, modeled on a Sears-exclusive chair that, as Torrans says, "is just dripping with that old-school look." What makes the metal lawn chair an American classic is its longevity and ubiquity, but also that it stands out in a sea of other options. "When you go to a big box store, you’re going to see a lot of furniture with fabric stretched over a frame that's done as cheaply as possible," Torrans says. "They're always in some kind of a brown. It might be a mocha or a coconut or a beige, but it's brown." Stamped metal lawn chairs come in a variety of colors, and besides, says Torrans, "They won’t sag in one season." But really the appeal of the metal lawn chair is that it triggers that back-of-your-mind mid-summer nostalgia. "Our catch phrase is 'Just like mom'n them had,'" Torrans says.