Side Chair

After receiving numerous requests from fellow architects to reissue their father's designs, Benjamin joined with his brother Thomas to form the Cherner Chair Company in 1999. Since then, the company has brought many of Norman Cherner's most celebrated designs back into production, based on the original drawings and specifications. The reissues are crafted with the same attention to detail as the original classics. Cherner Chair products are made in the USA and available through the Cherner Chair Company and retailers worldwide. In addition to reissuing Norman Cherner bent plywood chairs and stools, the company has introduced new designs by Benjamin Cherner.

Norman Cherner is best known for furniture design, but his work has ranged from graphics to lighting to prefab home design. Trained in the Bauhaus tradition, he saw architecture as an extension of industrial design. In 1948 he built the first low-cost modular homes in Ramapo, NY, while in 1957 he designed and assembled one of the first prefabricated homes in the United States, the "Pre-built" model, for the US Department of Housing. Among his most famous creations are the "Multi-Flex" modular storage system, the "Konwiser Line" furniture and lighting line, and above all the famous "Cherner Chair", designed in 1958 for Plycraft, today a design icon. Cherner studied and taught at Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, pursuing a parallel career in design and architecture. He is the author of several books, including "Fabricating Houses from Component Parts" (1958) and "Make your own Modern Furniture" (1953), dedicated to the construction of affordable furniture and housing.