Tomar Industries
1801-11 North Wolcott Avenue
Chicago 22, Illinois
and
851 W. Belmont
Chicago, Illinois
With its iconic looped needle design, Tomar trees are an aluminum engineering marvel. Tomar Industries was formed as a partnership between Stephen Hrajnoha, son of Slovak immigrants, and Jewish New York businessman, Bernard Schallinger. Hrajnoha’s engineering pedigree included building the Skokie Lagoons as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps. He helped create tooling and production lines for bomber engines in WWII and he worked as senior engineer for Sunbeam electric, as well as other entities. Hrajnoha never attended high school, receiving his machinist credentials through a correspondence school.
The Tomar company is a superlative example of engineering greatness in the aluminum Christmas tree industry. Hrajnoha held 2 very innovative patents protecting the Tomar tree designs and manufacturing methods:
BRANCHES
The loops of the Tomar branches, while breathtaking, are very fragile and prone to breakage. It is almost impossible to find a tree without some amount of broken loops. It is not advisable to hang ornaments on these delicate works of art.
POLES
Painted. The instructions indicate that a reamer tool is included for helping with any stubborn drill holes.
PRODUCTS
Tomar also made a non-looped version, the Tomar Imperial Arctic Star. Oddly, the poms were called Sunbursts.
The Tomar Imperial Economy was a straight-needle tree, attracting entry-level buyers.
The Moonfrost is a little-known tabletop tree by Tomar.
Tomar also produced trees under the Master Craft brand name for Walgreen’s.
SPACER
Visit the Gallery of Tomar!
The Tomar Wholesaler Brochure from 1962:
SPACER
More Tomar Promotional Materials and Ads!
Exhaustive measures were taken to find anyone with info on Tomar.
Although a family tree was constructed for both the Schallinger and Hrajnoha families,
The Aluminum Forest was unable to find current contact information.