What did you have in mind?
Trade terms for professionals and design studios
Most rooms are furnished from three catalogues: one for the chair, another for the stool at the counter, a third for the table between them. 1 Inch was conceived the other way round. Emeco and Jasper Morrison set out to make a family of chairs, stools and tables, and it shows wherever two of them stand side by side: the same recycled aluminium, the same brushed or powder-coated finish. That makes this designer chair the first line of a schedule that can go on to seat the whole floor.
The seating comes at three seat heights: chair, armchair and small stool at one level, then a counter stool, then a barstool. The tables answer with a café height and a bar height, so the high table and stools of a staff break area belong with the chairs in the meeting room next door. Everything is built in Hanover, Pennsylvania, for use indoors and out.
By material, the family divides in three. 1 Inch All Aluminum is recycled aluminium throughout: chair, armchair and three stools. The 1 Inch with an aluminium frame takes a seat in recycled plastic, in ash or walnut plywood, or upholstered. 1 Inch Reclaimed is a stacking chair in a single piece of recycled plastic. The tables have tops in aluminium, solid wood or Accoya. La Mercanti puts the chair, the stool and the table on one drawing of the room before quantities are discussed, so the three heights are seen together.
Tell us which finishes you'd like to assess
It depends on the collection. Emeco gives six high for the chair and the armchair, both in 1 Inch All Aluminum and in the version with the aluminium frame, and ten high for the one-piece 1 Inch Reclaimed. The figure matters when a room has to be cleared: sixty Reclaimed chairs make six stacks, sixty aluminium ones make ten. Work out the floor of the store from that number before the quantity is settled.
In eight: light grey, dark grey, green, bordeaux, brown, orange, blue and sand. They apply to the seat and back of the aluminium-frame chairs and to the seat of the stools, and the same eight return on 1 Inch Reclaimed, which adds white as a ninth. Emeco notes that moulded materials can vary slightly in colour, so the shade is best judged in the room, beside the floor it will stand on, and not on a screen.
From what has already been used once. Emeco declares that all its aluminium is at least 80% recycled and 100% recyclable, and that the recycled part is split evenly: half is post-consumer, which means drinks cans, and half is post-industrial, which means manufacturing scrap. The factory also returns all of its own aluminium offcuts to local recyclers. For a material schedule these are figures with a named source, which is what an auditor asks for.
Three groups. 1 Inch All Aluminum, whether hand brushed or powder coated; the aluminium-frame 1 Inch when its seat is in recycled plastic; and 1 Inch Reclaimed in every colour. Among the tables, those with aluminium base and aluminium top are for indoors and outdoors, and Accoya is the wooden top for the open air; like any natural wood it turns grey outside. Plywood, upholstery and the ash and walnut tops are the interior versions.
It is one of the three seats offered on the aluminium-frame 1 Inch, in place of recycled plastic or upholstery, and it comes in two species: ash or walnut. On the chair and the armchair the plywood forms seat and back; on the stools, the seat. Emeco lists the chair at 3.63 kg (8 lb), the same as with the plastic seat, so a mixed room handles identically. Keep it indoors: for a terrace the approved seat is the recycled plastic.
The upholstered 1 Inch can be covered in a material supplied by the client. Emeco sets the quantities and asks to approve the textile before the order; these five steps follow that sequence.
Customer's own material applies to the upholstered 1 Inch: an aluminium frame, hand brushed or powder coated, with a padded seat and back on the chair and armchair and a padded seat on the stools. Emeco upholsters over fire-retardant foam. Decide first which pieces in the room are to be covered.
Emeco asks for 0.7 m (0.75 yd) of fabric for each chair or armchair and 0.46 m (0.5 yd) for each stool. Multiply by the number of pieces at each height and keep the two totals apart: they are two different lines when the cloth is cut.
For leather the unit changes. A chair or an armchair takes 0.93 m² (10 sq ft), a stool 0.47 m² (5 sq ft). Hides are irregular, so pass these figures to the leather supplier as net area per seat and let them advise on how many hides that means.
Customer's own fabric and leather are accepted subject to approval. Emeco asks to confirm the suitability of a custom textile before the order is placed, since not every cloth behaves well on a seat. Send the technical sheet of the material at this stage, before anything is purchased.
If the project cloth is not approved, or none has been chosen yet, three collections are available in their full colour ranges: Camira Quest in recycled polyester, Kvadrat Divina Melange in wool and Spinneybeck Volo leather. One of them may already hold the shade the scheme needs.
