Early Norman Cherner dining / desk / side chair in patent leather Plycraft Inc.

Boasting clean lines, gentle curves and organic material, 1958’s Cherner chair distinctly embraced the attributes of mid-century modern furniture, even though its author may not have been as prolific or well-known as his contemporaries.

New York City architect and designer Norman Cherner (1920–87) was fascinated by the principles of the Bauhaus movement and taught at Columbia University — where he’d previously been a student — and at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He worked in various areas of design, including crafting storage systems and lighting, but the Cherner chair's inspiration came from his passion project: In the late 1940s, Cherner was building low-cost modular housing in upstate New York. He designed affordable furniture for these homes and wrote books such as Make Your Own Modern Furniture about his idea that good furniture should be available for all. The Cherner chair fits this philosophy, but the story begins with the Pretzel. 

In the early 1950s, a plywood chair called the Pretzel debuted in a Herman Miller showroom. It was conceived by John Pile, a designer in the studio of George Nelson, who was then Herman Miller’s design director. 

While beautiful, the Pretzel had structural problems and was expensive to make, so Herman Miller contracted Massachusetts manufacturer Plycraft to produce the chair. A dispute between the two companies and concerns over costs halted Pretzel production in 1957, so Plycraft president Paul Goldman got Cherner (a Nelson recommendation) to improve upon the design. The Cherner chair, in the sculptural swoop of its wing-like arms and sloping seat made of layers of laminated plywood, emphasized the distinctive properties of working with the material, not unlike the work of Charles and Ray Eames. The design became popular in 1958, but Cherner wouldn’t know: Goldman told him the chair was canceled while selling it under a different name.

Cherner sued Plycraft after he’d discovered he’d been lied to. When a judge ruled in his favor in 1961 — which forced Plycraft to pay Cherner royalties and bring the chair to market with proper credit — it was good timing. The chair appeared in Norman Rockwell’s new painting The Artist at Work, which ran on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in September of that year. Cherner’s elegant chair was famous, and it remained in production until 1972.

Today, the Cherner Chair Company, founded by Cherner’s sons Benjamin and Thomas, produces the Cherner chair based on Norman’s original drawings. It was reintroduced in 1999. In addition to manufacturing new cabinets and tables, the Cherner brothers have debuted various iterations of the Cherner chair — including with an upholstered seat, a painted seat and more — and have rescued their father’s other seductive seating designs as well.

Norman Cherner was an influential designer who explored postwar technological innovations and how to incorporate them into furniture production and architecture. And while its history is complicated, his Cherner chair is one of the most successful examples of mid-century modern molded plywood seating.

Born in New York City, Cherner was an architect and a prolific designer who taught at Columbia University’s Teachers College. An enthusiast of the Bauhaus, he gave lectures in the late 1940s on the principles of the legendary German design school at the Museum of Modern Art.

Cherner was fascinated with the concept of cost-efficient design, and this extended into his pioneering ideas for prefabricated housing. His philosophy was that a modular home should be a complete design concept that included economical furniture and lighting. He published several DIY books, such as How to Build a House for $6,000. Cherner caught the interest of a housing cooperative in upstate New York and was contracted to design and oversee the construction of prefabricated housing in the town of Ramapo. The U.S. Department of Housing assembled a pre-built Cherner home for exhibition in Vienna.

But he is best known for his chair.

In the 1950s, one of George Nelson’s designers, John F. Pile, created the Pretzel chair. It had structural problems and proved too costly to make at Herman Miller, where Nelson was director of design. Production was subcontracted to Massachusetts company Plycraft, but the agreement didn’t last long owing to a dispute between the furniture manufacturers. Based on a recommendation from Nelson, Plycraft sought out Cherner to redesign the chair so that it would be durable and affordable to produce.

Cherner submitted his redesign only to be told that Plycraft had shelved the project. However, Plycraft secretly began producing what would become the Cherner chair under a different name — and Cherner later stumbled across his seat in New York. Cherner sued Plycraft and won. The chair became instantly popular after being featured in a Norman Rockwell illustration for a Saturday Evening Post cover in September of 1961.

Other noteworthy Cherner designs include his Konwiser furniture line, Multiflex storage units and tube lighting. The Museum of Modern Art praised his Konwiser collection as “some of the most progressive furniture designs available to the American public.”

In 1972, Plycraft discontinued production of his chair, and Cherner died in 1987. In 1999, his two sons founded the Cherner Chair Company and began making furniture based on their father's original designs for armchairs, chairs — including the Cherner chair — tables and credenzas.

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