David Rowland


David Lincoln Rowland was an American industrial designer noted for inventing the 40/4 Chair. The chair was the first compactly stackable chair invented, and is able to stack 40 chairs high.

Early life and education

David Lincoln Rowland was born on February 12, 1924, in Los Angeles, the only child of Neva Chilberg Rowland, a violinist and W. Earl Rowland, an artist, lecturer and teacher. In 1936 he moved with his parents to Stockton, California where his father became director of the Haggin Museum. In the summer of 1940, when he was 16, he took a course with Laszlo Maholy-Nagy, one of the founders of The Bauhaus school, at Mills College in Oakland, California on Basic Bauhaus Design. After graduation from Stockton High School in 1942, he studied drafting, and worked as a draftsman for the Rheem Manufacturing Co., drawing plans for war munitions, before entering military service in World War II.
From 1943 through 1945 Rowland was a 1st Lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps, the 8th Air Force, 94th Bomb Group, and 333rd Squadron, as a B17 pilot. He was stationed in Bury St. Edmunds, England and conducted 22 combat missions. Rowland was awarded the Air Medal with several clusters.
After the end of the war, Rowland studied at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, graduating in 1949. He went on to study industrial design at the University of Southern California and afterwards at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, earning a master's degree in Industrial Design in 1951.

Early career

After graduating, Rowland worked outside of the design field and worked on his own designs in his spare time. He later took a job as head draftsman doing architectural renderings for Norman Bel Geddes.
Rowland also designed commercial interiors, including a Transparent Chair for the No-Sag Spring Co., a Zig Zag Cantilever Chair that was exhibited in 11th Milan Triennale in 1957 and a Drain Dry Cushion, licensed to Lee Woodard & Sons. In 1956, the royalty income from the Drain Dry Cushion allowed Rowland to open his own office.

The 40/4 chair">40/4 Chair">The 40/4 chair

Rowland developed the 40/4 chair over a period of 8 years and was awarded a patent on it in 1963.
Initially, Rowland showed chair to many companies in an effort to license the design. In 1961, Florence Knoll licensed the chair for her company, Knoll Associates, however canceled a license after six months. Rowland later showed the chair to Davis Allen, head of interior design at the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Allen requested 17,000 chairs for the a campus SOM was designing for the University of Illinois at Chicago. To fulfill the request, Rowland licensed the design to General Fireproofing Co. in Youngstown, Ohio. In May 1965, While the first order for was still being produced, 250 chairs were hand assembled and installed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for the opening of its new wing. MOMA also included the 40/4 in its permanent collection.
The 40/4 was an immediate success. It won the grand prize at the 13th Milan Triennale, and has been included in museum collections and exhibitions internationally.
In the book the Modern Chair, Clement Meadmore described the chair as having “beautiful simplicity and total appropriateness.” Twenty five hundred 40/4s were installed in St. Paul's Cathedral in London in 1973, site of Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding, and remain in use. The chair has been in continuous production since its introduction and has sold over 8 million units.
General Fireproofing held the license for the chair from 1963 until 2002 when the company was taken over by OSI Furniture LLC. In 2013, Howe Europe,, of Denmark, which had had a sublicense to the chair in Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Asia acquired the license for the 40/4 in the United States and Canada.
In 2010 Contract Design Magazine named the 40/4 number one of the top 10 commercial interiors products of the past 50 years.

Personal life

Rowland married Miss Erwin Wassum, a crafts designer, in 1971. They lived in New York City, before moving to Marion, Virginia in 2001.

Honors and awards

, New York, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Palais du Louvre, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris,. France
Design Museum, London, England
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Education

, Munich, Germany

Patents

  • 1956 Furniture Seating
  • 1956 Automobile License Plate and Fuel Tank Filler Spout Arrangement
  • 1957 Weatherproof Cushion
  • 1957 Spring Assembly
  • 1963 Compactly Stackable Chair
  • 1966 Compactly Stackable Chair
  • 1966 Compactly Stackable Chair
  • 1967 Dolly for Stacking Chairs
  • 1968 Compactly Stackable Chair
  • 1969 Nested Armchair
  • 1969 Collapsible and Stackable Paper Ash Receptacle for Cigarettes
  • 1968 Dispensing Package for Paper-Cup Ashtrays and the Like
  • 1972 Ash Tray
  • 1972 Seating Unit
  • 1973 Furniture for Seating People
  • 1973 Seating and Sub-Assembly for Seats and Backs
  • 1973 Seating Unit
  • 1973 Seating and Sub-Assembly for Seats and Back and Method for Making Same
  • 1973 Seating and Sub-Assembly for Seats and Backs
  • 1974 Folding Chair
  • 1974 Stackable Seating Units
  • 1981 Stackable Chairs
  • 1982 Chair and seat-back unit therefor
  • 1983 Stackable Armchair
  • 1984 Stackable Armchair
  • 1987 Stackable Armchair
  • 1994 Tubular Pedestal Assembly
  • 2005 Panel
  • 2011 Improved Panel
  • 1981 Combined Seat and Backrest Unit for a Chair
  • 1982 Armchair
  • 1982 Chair
  • 1983 Counter Armchair
  • 1983 Armchair
  • 1985 Tablet-Arm Chair
  • 1993 Chair
  • 2005 Stacking Chair