Remember those lightweight aluminum lawn chairs that graced every outdoor Southern event decades ago—from barbecues to church picnics to days spent at the beach or lake? The retro favorites are back, made the old-fashioned way in the tiny town of Walthourville, Georgia, thanks to brothers Mark and Gary Pokrandt of Lawn Chair USA.
Photo: Amy Dickerson
A chair from Lawn Chair USA is featured on pg. 96 of our June/July 2016 issue.
The brothers have been in the lawn chair game for decades, as was their father, manufacturing the chair’s familiar weatherproof plastic webbing. But when imitations made overseas started sinking the market, business slowed. “But we kept getting calls,” Gary says. “The imported versions were made of steel and much heavier and prone to rusting. People wanted the older ones.” So six years ago, the Pokrandts bought old production equipment to create aluminum frames and started cranking out their version of the nostalgic chairs. The company makes five styles in different heights with a variety of colorful weatherproof webbing, from patriotic red, white, and blue to summery lemon yellow and Charleston green.
A Southern-made comeback story: What’s not to love?
