From factory floor to the Bauhaus.
Many know of the legendary Bauhaus building Walter Gropius designed and the furnishings made by his students in collaboration for this purpose. But few know that when it came to choosing stools for the classrooms and workshops, Gropius deliberately chose the sturdy so called “Rowac-Schemel” from a small family-owned metal factory in the nearby town of Chemnitz, Germany. It’s exactly this stool that we’re bringing back to the market a century later.
Design Team
Cofounders: Dieter Amick, Alide Amick
Rowac-Schemel with solid oak seat top
Each leg is secured to the base plate with five rivets
Patented floor protection plate is bonded securely to the leg
A group of Bauhaus students and teachers sitting on Rowac schemel – 1923, Weimar Germany
Rowac advertisement in a brochure for the Bauhaus Dessau – around 1927
24 individual rivets secure the 9 sheet metal parts together
Security screw blends in with the riveted design
The Rowac-Schemel. Everything else is just a stool.
With the three-legged Rowac-Schemel, we are bringing a design classic in the field of industrial design back to market. Not only was it the world’s first seating furniture made of lightweight sheet metal, but also the once-forgotten Bauhaus schemel that now benefits from cult status. True to the original and produced in the same region as before, the Rowac Schemel offers the same advantages as it did over 100 years ago: clean design combined with practical, indestructible and honest construction. And this is just the beginning. We will revive selected products from the existing range as well as develop newly designed products with characteristic features Rowac is known for.
Rivet your eyes on this.
In contrast to conventionally welded steel furniture, which cracks when overloaded, riveted constructions bend only slightly at most. Structural stiffeners provide additional support while at the same time allowing for an astonishingly lightweight construction. It’s no wonder that many Rowac-Schemel have been in use for over 100 years.
Due to our competences and in cooperation with our metalworking partner, we were able to exactly reconstruct the design – despite the fact that no technical drawings, let alone tooling, exist from the past. The next-generation Rowac-Schemel requires 12 bending and stamping tools.
Gateway to the silver Ore Mountains.
In 1888 Rowac started production in Chemnitz, the gateway to the “silver Ore Mountains”. Today, that tradition lives on with production taking place exclusively within a 40 km radius of the city. Here, the metal parts are stamped, riveted together, coated and fitted with seat tops. The PEFC-certified wood used for production is sourced from the region and processed by experienced woodturners on site.
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