Emeco 1006

Emeco 1006 Navy Chair

An Emeco 1006 chair
Inception	1944
Available	Yes
Current supplier	Emeco
Last production year	Current
Website	Official website

The Emeco 1006 (pronounced ten-oh-six), also known as the Navy chair, is an aluminum chair manufactured by Emeco. The 1006 was originally built for Navy warships during World War II, but later became a designer chair used in high-end restaurants and by interior designers. In the 1990s, the company began creating designer versions of the 1006 chair, such as the stackable Hudson chair and the 111 Navy Chair made from recycled plastic. Emeco also makes stools, tables, and other furniture. As of 2012, more than one million Emeco 1006 chairs have been produced.

Emeco founder Wilton C. Dinges developed the Emeco 1006 chair in 1944 in collaboration with the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). It was originally designed for the US Navy, which needed a chair for the deck of battleships that could survive sea air and a torpedo blast to the side of the ship. The chairs had eye bolts under the seat, so they could be attached to a ship-deck using cables.

After the war, Emeco started selling 1006 chairs to prisons, hospitals and government offices. The chair was sold to restaurants in the 1980s and 1990s, under Jay Buchbinder's leadership, then as a designer chair in the 2000s after Emeco was acquired by his son, Gregg. French designer Philippe Starck designed a total of 14 chairs and 4 tables for Emeco.

In 2006 Coca-Cola began a collaboration with Emeco to create a 1006-based chair made out of recycled Coca-Cola bottles, which was released in 2010.Metropolis Magazine said it was a public relations effort by Coke to make a durable product out of their bottles; they also hoped to encourage other manufacturers to do the same.

In 2005, Target started selling an Emeco 1006 imitation product supplied by Euro Style. The supplier said it planned to modify the chair's style to avoid a legal dispute over alleged trademark infringement. In October 2012, Emeco filed a lawsuit against Restoration Hardware for allegedly making unauthorized reproductions of the 1006 Navy chair. Restoration Hardware removed the chair from its website, stopped selling the chair, and reached an undisclosed settlement with Emeco.

The Emeco 1006 chair is featured regularly in design magazines and movies, such as The Matrix,Law & Order and CSI. In Europe the original 1006 chair is sometimes referred to as "the prison chair" due to its use in government prisons and in prison-related movie scenes.