This is the new Springbar® Foldaway Chair by Zip Dee®, each is made with a tough automotive steel frame with a chrome finish for corrosion proofing, and they have real oak wood armrests rather than the more common cheap plastic.
Zip Dee® has been making folding chairs at their Illionis factory since 1967, so they know a thing or two about it. Their chairs do retail for more than your cheap Costco folding chairs, but they’ll last far longer, and look better while they’re doing it.
Each chair is made in the USA by Zip Dee® in Illinois, where they’ve been building chairs just like this since 1967. They also all have a frame made from chromed automotive steel for strength, with real oak armrests.
History Speedrun: Springbar® Tents
Springbar’s history goes all the way back to 1944, in the closing months of World War II, when Jack Kirkham Sr. returned to Salt Lake City after serving as a draftsman in Naval shipyards during the war and bought the AAA Tent & Awning Shop, a small 1,200 square-foot workshop.
In the early years, Kirkham made a huge range of canvas goods – tarps, awnings, horse blankets, covers for sheep camp wagons, and wall tents for outfitters, herders, and miners. Through the 1950s, as recreational car camping grew in popularity across America, Kirkham shifted focus toward camping tents and began experimenting with alternatives to the cumbersome and complicated pole-and-rope frameworks that defined conventional tent design at the time.
Kirkham’s breakthrough came in 1961 with the invention of the Springbar tent, a canvas tent design built around a patented system of tensioned spring steel rods and aluminum poles that distributed stress evenly across the entire structure.
The first model was a 10′ x 10′ tent (the design that would become the Traveler) with a list price of just $83. In 1966, Coleman licensed the Springbar patent to manufacture and sell their own Springbar tents.
Kirkham continued to work on the design and further expand the model line, and in 1979 he moved the business into a purpose-built 26,000 square-foot facility on State Street in Salt Lake City, renaming it Kirkham’s Outdoor Products – Home of the Springbar Tent.
This is the Springbar® Traveler Tent, it’s part of a series of American-made canvas tents that have been in continuous production since the 1960s.
The retail operation thrived through the 1980s and 1990s, carrying over 200 brands and employing 50 staff at its peak. In the 1990s, the business passed to Jack Jr., who had worked alongside his father since age 15. Jack Sr. passed away in 2008 at the age of 90.
In 2019, Pace Measom and partners bought the business from Jack Kirkham Jr., refocusing it back on Springbar tent manufacturing and design. The company continues to cut and sew its American-made tents by hand in Salt Lake City.
The Springbar® Foldaway Chair By Zip Dee®
This is the new Foldaway Chair, it’s made by Zip Dee® specifically for Springbar®, and it’s made with the same red striped Sunbrella® fabric as the Hoodoo Red Springbar® tent collection, ensuring a perfect match.
Each chair is made in the USA by Zip Dee® in Illinois, where they’ve been building chairs just like this since 1967. They also have a frame made from chromed automotive steel for strength, with real oak armrests.
This is the new Foldaway Chair, it’s made by Zip Dee® specifically for Springbar®, and it’s made with the same red striped Sunbrella® fabric as the Hoodoo Red Springbar® tent collection, ensuring a perfect match.
The chairs fold flat for easy transportation, and unlike the cheap folding chairs you see at budget camping retailers, these ones can (and often do) last for decades.
The Foldaway Chair is now available to buy direct from the Springbar® store here.
The Foldaway Chair, it’s made by Zip Dee® specifically for Springbar®, and it’s made with the same red striped Sunbrella® fabric as the Hoodoo Red Springbar® tent collection, ensuring a perfect match.
Images courtesy of Springbar® + Zip Dee®
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
