Rockford businessman Shawn Barbagallo sits among some of his plastic hand chairs. (Photo by Karie Angell Luc/For Chronicle Media)

Video: https://youtu.be/yYs_M-4ai2U?feature=shared

You’ve got to hand it to Rockford businessman Shawn Barbagallo for keeping a part of Chicago area pop culture going.

Barbagallo of South Beloit, Wis. has a warehouse in Rockford filled with iconic plastic hand chairs made as lefties or righties.

The chairs are manufactured in Manitowoc, Wis. The lefty hand chairs have their own spot in an upstairs warehouse loft. Right-handed chairs sell the most.

Since 1998, Barbagallo, owner of Hand Shaped Chairs, has molded and sold “well over 25,000 chairs” and it’s “not going to stop.”

He is also a ceramic artist and maintains Raku Gold Pottery.

Barbagallo hopes to surpass 50 or 60 hand-chair colors. Currently, there are nearly 30 colors.

“We’re making more new colors and expanding color lines,” he said.

You can get the low-density polyethylene plastic chairs in cotton candy pink, Chicago Bears blue (or orange) and granite-looking chairs for visual texture. The gold chair sparkles.

The chairs are recyclable and the ones that don’t pass quality inspection are broken apart and remolded.

People have asked about middle finger chairs and that gesture has been fulfilled.

If hand chairs get scuffed, they can be sanded or re-polished.

The plastic hand chairs are indestructible, Barbagallo promotes, and can be left outdoors, even in hot and cold climates. A power wash helps to bring back luster, he said.

Barbagallo’s favorite chair color is royal blue. Bestsellers are black and white.

He has also made plastic oversized pickles, cameras and water faucets.

Barbagallo’s chairs have been at fundraisers and art galleries, and used on television sets, including the

Barbagallo carries a chair from his Rockford warehouse. (Photo by Karie Angell Luc/For Chronicle Media)

Nickelodeon show “iCarly” as “The Chair of Wonder,” a red older model right-handed chair with a notch in the thumb designed to hold a beverage. See https://youtu.be/2m72eIFjN80?feature=shared.

“It’s kind of cool that it’s been on all these different TV shows,” said Barbagallo, who no longer makes the older version seen on iCarly. That hand is slightly too large to justify re-creating a mold due to costlier freight shipping.

The COVID-19 pandemic gave the plastic hand chair a lift as people surfed the internet, wanting to decorate their homes while sheltering in place, Barbagallo said. 

“Really, social media kind of brought it back full force,” Barbagallo said. “But it’s kind of become a semi cultural icon, the hand chair, and now, when somebody says, ‘hand chair,’ (they say) ‘I love those, those are so cool.’”

Heather and Shawn Barbagallo take wedding photos in the hand chairs in 2013. (Photo courtesy of the Barbagallo family)

Barbagallo and his wife, Heather, posed in black and white hand chairs for their 2013 wedding. They are now the parents of son, Enzo, and twin daughters, Evie and Ellie.

The history of the hand chair is up for debate and when you Google the hand chair, examples with long fingers are shown in wood. Articles refer to the 1960s design by surrealist artist Pedro Friedeberg of Mexico.

However, the plastic version is maybe as Chicago area iconic as Mold-A-Rama machines of Brookfield Zoo fame that still make plastic- injected molded figures in many shapes at venues including local zoos and museums.

Just ask Pete Zalewski of Bensenville who grew up in Niles and is of the Maine East High School Class of 1992. His late father, Edmund, worked at Glass Plastics in Itasca. A Bensenville company then made the hand chairs after a change of company hands.

“My father was the plant manager at Glass and made the first original chairs (circa 1970s),” said Zalewski, who was also in the plastics business for 30 years and owned E-Z Rotational Molder in Elk Grove Village. “My father was such a big part.

“The plastic hand chair was based on Pedro Friedeberg’s wooden artwork,” Zalewski said. “The first (plastic) hand chair mold was cast from a Friedeberg chair.

“It was always made here. I love Chicago history, I love it.

“There’s millions of people who love to take credit for it. This I know for a fact because everybody I would meet would say, ’I made that,’ but no, no, no, it was Glass Plastics who originally made them,” Zalewski added.

“There’s always people who want to take credit for the hand chair,” Zalewski added. “And they’ll say, ‘You know who was the first person to make this,” and they’ll point to themselves, and I’m like, ‘That’s not true.’”

Zalewski recalls his father bringing home a company truck filled with plastic hand chairs of all colors.

“It was cool as a child seeing that,” but, “Growing up, we ended up being the only people in the neighborhood who did not have one because everyone wanted one.”

Zalewski’s favorite plastic hand chair color is purple. He still has the brown catcher’s mitt chair that might be a home run with baseball fans.

Barbagallo asked to buy some old Glass Plastics molds, but they were destroyed, so he started making the

Shawn Barbagallo uses a blow torch to finish a chair. (Photo by Karie Angell Luc/For Chronicle Media)

chairs with other molds.

Barbagallo also has a brown catcher’s mitt chair at the Rockford warehouse and is keeping it unsold to possibly use for a mold if consumer demand has a hand in its relaunch.

For now, social media is spreading the word about, “a fun future and something funky that probably would have died off if we didn’t continue with it,” Barbagallo said.

“What I’m doing here, I’m hoping to bring a little joy,” Barbagallo said. “They’re definitely a good conversation piece.”

For chair offerings, visit www.handshapedchairs.com or HandShapedChairs on Etsy.