Obituary of David Rowland

Remembering David Lincoln Rowland Almost everyone has sat on a chair designed by David Rowland, the industrial designer, who passed on at his home in Marion VA August 13, 2010. He designed and invented the first ever compactly stackable chair - what he called the "40 in 4", (later called the 40/4) because it stacks 40 chairs in 4 feet high. It is found around the world in office buildings, schools, universities, conference centers, churches, opera houses, restaurants, stores, cultural centers, the military, the Pentagon, boats and even submarines! The guests at Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding in St. Paul's Cathedral in London sat on 3, 000 of his chairs. Born February 12, 1924 in Hollywood CA, the only child of Neva Chilberg Rowland, a violinist, and Earl Rowland, an artist, David lived in Los Angeles until he was 13. He then moved with his family to Stockton CA when his father became director of the Haggin Museum there. Upon graduating from Stockton High School, at 17 he enlisted in WWII in the Army Air Corps. He became a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot in the 8th Air Force and the youngest pilot on his air base in Bury St. Edmund, England, at the time. He flew 24 combat missions. After the war he entered Principia College, in Elsah, IL, majoring in physics and art, graduating in 1949. He humorously recalled that as a freshman at the college he was not allowed to drive a car - although he had just come from a war piloting B17s - while the 16 year old sophomore girl he dated was allowed to drive! David's next stop was Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills MI, where he received his Masters degree in industrial design in 1951. While there he had an idea for putting the gas cap on cars underneath the license plate. He showed it to a vice president at Ford Motor Company who said they wouldn't be interested. A few months later it came out on the latest Ford cars! But David was not bitter about the apparent theft of his idea. He said there were more ideas where that one came from. He also learned he must patent his inventions. Upon graduation from Cranbrook David was offered a job by the famous industrial designer Charles Eames in California, but turned the offer down, saying he wanted to go to New York City to try things out on his own. Getting a job in New York in his own field, however, wasn't easy. Every industrial design firm that he applied to for a job required that he sign an agreement saying anything he designed while he was employed by them belonged to them. This he wouldn't do. Norman Bel Geddes, however, another renowned industrial designer, didn't have that requirement and hired David. So David worked for Mr. Bel Geddes and at a variety of other jobs during the day and on his own design projects at night. It was during this time, working out of his $40 a month room in Manhattan, that he developed the 40/4 chair, a project that took him eight years. Patience and persistence, however, paid off and in 1963 he ultimately signed a contract with GF Office Furniture whose first order for the chairs was for 17, 000 of them, for the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. In 1964 the chair was awarded the highest design award in the world, the grand prize, at the prestigious Milan Triennale. It was the first of many design awards it was to receive for its functionality, originality and beauty. It is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris and other museums. It is currently manufactured by OSI in the U.S. and Howe a/s in Denmark. Another Rowland design to receive top awards was the Sof-Tech chair incorporating his Sof-Flex invention, which is also in museum collections. While he is best known for his seating, David also had a variety of other designs and inventions for lighting, tables, ash trays, flood control devices and other things. He was a man with a wide variety of interests. He enjoyed culture and the arts and also traveling the world - if it had to do with his work! He held almost 50 patents. He always liked to try doing the impossible. If someone said something was "impossible", that was a challenge to him to figure out how the impossible could be achieved. David lived in New York City for 50 years before coming to Marion, Virginia in 2001 to help his wife, Erwin, care for her parents. It was a good move. He loved it and would say, "I've lived in wonderful places - California, New York and Virginia!" David was a lifelong Christian Scientist. He was a member of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City, and attended the Christian Science Church in Bristol, VA/TN. He and his wife, the former Erwin Wassum, were married 39 years. Their only children were their many projects. David has cousins in California, Colorado and The Netherlands and many friends everywhere. Condolences may be made to Mrs. Rowland at www.seaverbrown.com.