Classmates: The Mullca Chair, a lasting throne, imitated and never equaled

Ben diary, 4-color Bic pen, or Eastpak bag... some slip into pencil cases, others wear out from being carried, or linger at the bottom of a locker. Practical objects or stylish markers, they survive the years without aging. For this back-to-school season, Libération takes a look back at these objects that never leave school. In this episode, the tubular seat designed after the Second World War to modernize classrooms.

We've all sat on it as children at some point, even carved a few ecumenical inscriptions with a compass or stuck a piece of chewing gum on it. And for good reason: the Mullca chair, with its tubular steel base and curved plywood seat and back, has welcomed—and continues to do so in some schools that haven't updated their furniture since Methuselah—the calm or restless bottoms of generations of students, from primary to secondary school.

Up to 12 million units were produced, from prototypes in the 1950s to the latest models in the 1990s, when the Noisy-le-Sec factory closed and the parent company was liquidated . But its longevity in French schools commands respect. "It's a fairly iconic chair that has remained in the collective unconscious," notes Nicolas Girard, co-founder