Secretarial Pull-Up Chair

The “Dash Ninety-Nine” was a 1966 update to the upholstered fiberglass armchair which combined a textile seat with a Naugahyde back. This variation of the secretarial chair, building on the same material vocabulary of the Dash Ninety-Nine, was offered in the 1970s and added to the customization options for Herman Miller’s corporate clients. Here, a rich buttery Naugahyde is paired with a textured black-and-yellow woven Hopsak—both of which are complemented by the ochre tone of the chair’s exterior molded fiberglass shell. Both textiles were designed by Alexander Girard, the close friend of the Eameses who led Herman Miller’s textile division since its inception in 1952. While the secretarial shell was generally offered on either a Contract or Universal base (models PSCA-1 and EC431-01 respectively), this particular chair was custom ordered with a standard H-base. The fiberglass shell was made by Cincinnati Milling Machine Corporation, a company that began providing shells to Herman Miller in the mid-1950s.