ION SEATING
Gideon Kramer
Temple, TX: Ion Division, American Desk Manufacturing Company, [1970]. Original edition. Slim quarto. Printed folder with [12] inserts in a variety of sizes. [9] 8.5 x 11 sheets and [3] folded sheets fully illustrated with black and white product shots and manufacturing specifications. Interior Designer inkstamp to rear folder surface, otherwise a fine set.
9 x 11 folder with 12 inserts in a variety of formats with black and white photographs devoted to Gideon Kramer’s ION furniture designs for American Desk Manufacturing. All furniture designs are identified by name, dimensions and manufacturing specifications. I suspect this information could be useful to some people out there.
Includes two-sided information sheets for the S-1 Side Chair, S-1A Side Chair With Arms; S-4A Side Chair With Arms; 9130 / 9140 / 9150 / 9160/ 9131 / 9141 / 9151 / 9161 Pedestal Chairs; 9400 ION Educational Seating; 9500 ION Airport Seating Beam System; OM -5A-4 Double Occasional Multi-Seating, ION 9700 and 9800 Pedestal Tables; and folded sheets for the S-5A & O-5A Chairs With Arms; the 9170 / 9172 / 9182 / 9173 Floor Mounted Chairs; and the 9900 ION Educational Seating Swinging-Swivel Seat And Table System.
Gideon Kramer (United States, 1917 – 2012) was an artist, sculptor, philosopher, writer, inventor, and candlemaker who designed homes, offices, award winning schools, a hydro drive hydrofoil ferry, and the first single unit, lap-dissolve slide projector. And the famous ION Chair as well.
Kramer studied at the Art Institute of Chicago’s School of Design from 1937 to 1941. During the following year, after finishing his course work, Kramer forged a path different from that of many of his classmates. “Instead of serving my apprenticeship in a design office like most of the students, I decided to work in factories where I could develop an intimate knowledge of the ways and means of producing products,” he said. After winning a competition for the design of a blowtorch sponsored by Turner Brass Works, in Sycamore, Illinois, the company agreed to let him serve a three-month apprenticeship in their foundry. He then went to work for in the Tivoli Furniture factory for several months, and then for Manikins Rubber Composition Company where he learned to make intricate plastic molds. After working in wood and plastics, it was metal fabrication that ultimately brought Gideon Kramer to the Pacific Northwest. “To complete my education, I decided I needed to work in a light metal factory,” he said. “Since my wife Ruth and I were longing to move to the Pacific Northwest, I applied to Boeing . . . I was hired in October of 1941, right before Pearl Harbor.”
Kramer moved to Seattle to begin work at the Boeing Aircraft Company in 1942. It was the beginning of a long and successful career, which culminated in his being acknowledged as one of the greatest industrial designers of our time.
In 1946, Kramer assisted architect Ralph Burkard in designing Southgate Elementary School in the community of Lakewood, Washington. The project received the 1951 Seattle American Institute of Architects (AIA) honor award. While working with Burkard on the design of Foster High School, in Tukwila, Kramer developed what he referred to as the “inside-out” classroom concept. Among the design’s many innovations was the wall that separated the classroom from the outside corridor. It was made of floor to ceiling glass with shelves to showcase student projects. The classroom walls could also be quickly and easily reconfigured to serve the evolving needs of the students.
While working with Burkard on Southgate Elementary, Kramer was asked to specify classroom seating. When he saw what was available, he knew he could do better. “Seeking a greater standing, I designed a chair, which like other great designers, Mies Van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer and Charles Eames, became my identity,” Kramer said. It was at The Camp where Kramer designed and then constructed, in the garage, a prototype of a child-sized chair, made out of vulcanized fiber that had been soaked in the bathtub, cured over the wood stove, and then painted and hung on the clothesline to dry.
Once the design and manufacture was perfected, Kramer made and installed chairs and accompanying tables at the school for three kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. In the 1950’s, Kramer designed an adult version of the ION chair with a body made of molded fiberglass mounted on a metal base. The chair was designed to follow the movement of the body as the occupant shifts position, while still providing good support, comfort and beauty.
“Mine was a simple straight chair intended as a hightech successor to the classic Thonet chair,” Kramer said, referencing a 19th century design by Michael Thonet that was constructed using pieces of wood shaped by way of an industrial steaming process.
Producing the ION chair was a family affair. Kramer’s eldest child, Edward, was his right-hand man. Edward Kramer built and tested prototypes, supervised the production, managed the installations and worked with Gideon Kramer perfecting the design. Guy Kramer was the photographer, Lawrence Kramer assisted Edward and worked on the metal bases, while nine-year old Milo took joy rides around the Auburn Industrial Park in the company’s flatbed truck.
By 1962, when an order came in to furnish the most iconic structure in the Northwest – The Space Needle – with ION chairs, the entire Kramer family pitched in to get the job done. The night before the installation of the chairs in the Space Needle, after enjoying Kramer’s special Hungarian goulash, the whole family sat around the dining room table doing the final sanding of the wooden arms for the chairs. The next morning, Gideon Kramer’s three oldest sons and a few neighbor boys hauled the completed chairs to the fairgrounds to begin the cumbersome process of getting them up to the restaurant. First, they loaded as many chairs as they could into the elevator, pushed the button, and sent the chairs up to the restaurant. Then they ran as fast as they could up the 848 stairs where they unloaded the elevator and rode it back down. This was repeated several times until the job was completed.
In 1966 Kramer was awarded the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Industrial Arts Medal for the design and development of his famed ION chair, which was considered one of the first truly ergonomically correct chairs in the industry. In 1968, Kramer sold ION Corporation to American Desk Corporation in Temple, Texas. Both Gideon Kramer and Edward Kramer continued working with American Desk on the ION chair for several years. The ION chair is now a part of the permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and a child’s version of the ION chair is in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Even the World Trade Center, destroyed in the tragedy of 9/11, had been outfitted with hundreds of ION chairs. — Brygida McDermott