Have you been seeing a resurgence in industrial chic interior design? So have we! The combination of cool metal furniture with warm wooden accents join forces to pull off something organic and awesome. Popular especially in cafes and bistros, the use of classic steel furniture is both vintage and urban. We know what’s hot in restaurant design today, so we’ve created an inexpensive replica to the famous TOLIX® Company Model A chair that you’re seeing a lot of lately. This vintage seating design has inspired one of our newest furniture lines! We call ours Viktor, but here’s a little history of how the Viktor came to be. Because you shouldn’t have to pay tall prices for good design…agree?
According to the company’s website, the original chair was first created by French designer Xavier Pauchard (1880-1948) in 1934, who started the company TOLIX® to produce galvanized metal household items after WWI. He soon began using sheet metal to build chairs and stools, and he trademarked his company’s brand in 1927. The Model A chair was born, and matching stools soon followed. Pauchard was entrepreneurial, and the furniture he built soon became popular mainstays across many residential and commercial settings, including offices, hospitals, museums, and cafe terraces. Their international popularity peaked in the late 1950s, when the company’s 80 workers were producing 60,000 units annually.
The TOLIX® Company stayed in the Pauchard family until the early 21st Century. In 2004, Chantal Andriot bought the brand and began its revival. She recruited new designers to re-invent the functionality of the vintage French industrial chair to meet today’s tastes and market expectations. With new technology and manufacturing processes in place, the Model A chair has once again found unfailing popularity across the globe.
Because many of the restaurant owners who turn to us for their furniture needs began asking about this same design, we talked to our manufacturers about creating a similar chair at a fraction of the price without infringing on the original artist’s label. Enter Viktor. This chair is an affordable alternative to the name brand and is proof that we care about what our customers are looking for in terms of quality and style. We listened, so you can put the Viktor steel restaurant chair, bar stool, and backless bar stool to work in creating the industrial chic and urban atmosphere your restaurant decor demands.
Our Viktor line has been commercially weight tested and is made of 16-gauge rolled and stamped steel. With a ten-step finishing process, the restaurant furniture shows off its characteristic abrasions and markings, which are topped off with a clear powder coat finish. The full sigma welds ensure its industrial strength, and Viktor comes complete with non-marring rubber glides to protect your restaurant’s floor. We also wanted to give restaurant owners the ease and flexibility by making sure that the steel restaurant chair could stack on top of one another. Our owners are really pleased with how well this chair has been designed to meet our customers’ aesthetic and functionality needs.
What’s more, we had a special employee-only naming competition internally at East Coast Chair & Barstool to name this new line. With a gift certificate on the line, one of our customer care specialists, Kerry, took the honor with her name recommendation of Viktor, which stuck. Now when you see an industrial chic steel restaurant chair, you’ll just smile and think to yourself, “that’s Viktor!”
Are you interested in our other sources of inspiration? From following popular trends to creating original designs, East Coast Chair & Barstool continues to grow its own restaurant furniture lines. Let us know what you’re interested in learning about next!
Source: https://www.tolix.fr/en/pages/1-history
See how the Viktor can be the center of your restaurant’s design!
