Charles & Ray Eames - A Modern Collection

A MODERN COLLECTION

C H A R L E S & R AY E A M E S

“ THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU LOVE WHAT YOU ARE DOING, AND THE SECOND THAT YOU ARE NOT AFRAID OF WHERE YOUR NEXT IDEA WILL LEAD ” CHARLES EAMES

4 ...................................... BIOGRAPHY 8 ...................................... ORGANIC CHAIR 10 ...................................... LCW 12 ...................................... DCM 14 ...................................... DCW 16 ...................................... LCM 18 ...................................... L A CHAISE 20 ...................................... FIBERGL ASS 22 ...................................... WIRE CHAIR 24 ...................................... FIBERGL ASS SIDE CHAIR 26 ...................................... COMPACT SOFA 28 ...................................... LOUNGE CHAIR & OTTOMAN 30 ...................................... ALUMINUM GROUP 32 ...................................... WALNUT STOOLS 34 ...................................... PL ASTIC ARMCHAIR DAL 36 ...................................... 3473 SOFA 38 ...................................... SOFT PAD 40 ...................................... SOFA ES108 44 ...................................... PL ASTIC ARMCHAIR 46 ...................................... PL ASTIC SIDE CHAIR 48 ...................................... MOLDED WOOD CHAIR

INDEX

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Best known for their groundbreaking contributions to architecture, furniture design, industrial design and manufacturing, and the photographic arts.

ABOUT C H A R L E S & R AY

EAMES

Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended school there and developed an interest in engineering and architecture. After attending Washington University in St. Louis on scholarship for two years and being thrown out for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright, he began working in an architectural office.

In 1929, he married his first wife, Catherine Woermann, and a year later Charles’ only child, Lucia was born.

In 1930, Charles started his own architectural office. He began extending his design ideas beyond architecture and received a fellowship to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he eventually became head of the design department.

Ray Kaiser Eames was born in 1912 in Sacramento, California. She studied painting with Hans Hofmann in New York before moving on to Cranbrook Academy where she met and assisted Charles and Eero Saarinen in preparing designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Furniture Competition. Charles and Eero’s designs, created by molding plywood into complex curves, won them the two first prizes.

Charles and Ray married in 1941 and moved to California where they continued their furniture design work with molding plywood. During World War II they were commissioned by the United States Navy to produce molded plywood splints, stretchers, and experimental glider shells. In 1946, Evans Products began producing the Eames’ molded plywood furniture.

Their molded plywood chair was called “the chair of the century” by the influential architectural critic Esther McCoy. Soon production was taken over by Herman Miller, Inc., who continues to produce the furniture in the United States today. Our other partner, Vitra International, manufactures the furniture in Europe.

In 1949, Charles and Ray designed and built their own home in Pacific Palisades, California, as part of the Case Study House Program sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine. Their design and innovative use of materials made the House a mecca for architects and designers from both near and far. Today, it is considered one of the most important post-war residences anywhere in the entire world.

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EAMES-MADE

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ORGANIC C HAIR Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen developed the Organic Chair in 1941. They created the design for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Eames and Saarinen were awarded First Place in Seating as well as First Place for their Case Goods.

Charles explained, “It was attempting to put new life into an industry, which had become ingrown. Their aim and the aim of every competitor, I am sure, was to provide the largest group of people with good furniture within their means. The opportunity was a rare one because of the unique phase of the Competition, which provided contact with manufacturers and an outlet for the winning designs. In the three-way curve laminated shell construction and the rubber weld Eero Saarinen and I felt that we had found processes that would go a long way toward filling our ideas of the chair need�.

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LCW The Eames Lounge Chair Wood (LCW) (also known as Low Chair Wood or Eames Plywood Lounge Chair) is a low seated easy chair designed by husband and wife team Charles and Ray Eames.

The chair was designed using technology for molding plywood that the Eames developed before and during WWII. Before American involvement in the war, Charles Eames and his friend, architect Eero Saarinen, entered a furniture group into the Museum of Modern Art’s “Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition” in 1940, a contest exploring the natural evolution of furniture in response to the rapidly changing world. Eames & Saarinen won the competition. However, production of the chairs was postponed due to difficulties, and then by the United States’ entry into WWII. Saarinen ultimately left the project due to

frustration with production.

Charles Eames and his wife Ray Kaiser Eames moved to Venice Beach, CA in 1941. Charles took a job as a set painter for MGM Studios to support them. Ray, formally trained as a painter and sculptor, continued experiments with molded plywood designs in the spare room of their apartment.

In 1942 Charles left MGM to begin making molded plywood splints for the U.S. Air Force. The splints used compound curves to mimic the shape of the human leg. The experience of shaping plywood into compound curves contributed greatly to the development of the LCW.

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DCM Introduced in the fall of 1946, the Eames DCM (Dining Chair Metal) quickly became an American design classic. Its seat and back are molded to fit the contours of every body, and its attached rubber mounts allow the chair to flex and shift.

This provides comfort rarely found in non-upholstered seating.

The path to creating this chair began in the early 1940s when the Eameses first experimented with molding plywood into complex curves. Their investigation would have profound effects on the design world. Charles and Ray’s discoveries led to a commission from the US Navy to develop plywood splints, stretchers, and glider shells, which were produced throughout World War II. Once the war ended, the Eameses applied what they had learned to their initial goal: mass-producing high-quality, affordable chairs.

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Charles and Ray created the basic tooling necessary for manufacturing the seating in quantity. Their original objective had been to make a single shelled chair, but the plywood could not withstand the stress at the curve where the seat and back met. The Eameses, who believed that “the honest use of materials” was essential to any project, eventually opted for separate seats and backs. The process eliminated extraneous wood, which reduced the weight and visual profile of the chair and established a basis for modern furniture design.

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DCW In 1946, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) introduced the world to the “Eames Plywood Chair” with a show called New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames. The exhibition featured a tumbling drum that arduously flipped the chairs around, demonstrating their extreme durability.

For a 1954 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art television program called Discovery, the Eameses created a film about the chair’s development. Here is an excerpt of the narration:

“In a more or less standard situation like sitting for eating or writing, we found that certain relationship of support gives optimum comfort to a surprisingly large number of people. We found that comfort depended more on the perfect molding to the body shape than it did on the way the bone structure was supported.

And if the structure was supported properly, the hard and rigid material like molded plywood can provide a remarkably high degree of comfort.

We concentrated on plywood.

We tried movement and found that if the back was allowed to move in relation to the seat, the latitude of comfort was increased. First, the movement was mechanical. Then it developed into the idea of a rubber shocked mount and movable connection. In the design of any structure, it is often the connection that provide the key to the solution. The factor of movement also help the idea of a chair in two pieces—the seat and a back. The two surfaces developed into petal-like form. Model, remodeled, test and re-test a hundred times. Contoured, repaired and lost it. Always checking the back and seat of many people. It seems practical to have a frame that would hold the two surfaces in relation to each other and in relation to the floor”.

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LCM Charles and Ray had a number of key objectives in designing chairs. They wanted them to be reasonably priced, light, and durable. It was also important that they follow the natural contours of the body and flex with a person’s movements.

One of the Eames’ most inventive ideas was the application of shock mounts to furniture design. Previously employed only for industrial purposes, Charles and Ray were the first to adapt the technique to plywood chairs. They used thick rubber discs to reduce the shock between the wooden seat and back sections, providing strength, resiliency, and flexibility within the composition.

The LCM (Lounge Chair Metal) features sheets of premium face veneer on both sides of the seat and back. The wide variety of wood available adds to the versatility and beauty of Charles and Ray’s molded plywood design. The chair can also be padded and upholstered, giving you numerous options to customize the seating for any space.

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LA CHAISE Charles and Ray designed this lounge chair for The Museum of Modern Art’s 1948 “International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design”. Its name references both its function as well as Gaston Lachaise’s Floating Figure sculpture, whose shape the Eames’ thought would fit the chair perfectly.

Comprised of two bonded fiberglass shells, a chromed base, and natural oak feet, the chair not only exhibits a captivating elegance and allows for a wide range of sitting and reclining positions.

The Eames La Chaise was never sold during Charles and Ray’s lifetime, as it proved too costly to produce; however, their Armchair design, which they entered into the same competition, won a prize and was produced in fiberglass which achieved great success.

It was not until 1996 that the long-time Eames partner, Vitra International, began manufacturing and distributing the La Chaise in response to public interest and demand. Today, the chair serves as a long-established icon of organic design.

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FIBERGL ASS The Eames Molded Plastic & Fiberglass Armchair is a fiberglass chair, designed by Charles and Ray Eames, that appeared on the market in 1950. The chair was intentionally designed for the “International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design”. This competition, sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, was motivated by the urgent need in the post-war period for low-cost housing and furnishing designs adaptable to small housing units.

The chair was offered in a variety of colors and bases, such as the “Eiffel Tower” metal base, a wooden base, and a rocker base. The plastic fiberglass armchair is one of the most famous designs of Charles and Ray Eames, and is still popular today.

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WIRE CHAIR The Eames Wire Chair is a unique iteration in the shell chair’s continuous evolution.

In the 1950s, Charles and Ray started experimenting in bent and welded wire. Inspired by trays, dress forms, and baskets, the Eames Office developed a number of pieces, including the wire version of the single-shell form.

The shell design combines transparent lightness with technological sophistication and is available in a variety of bases. The Wire Chair is available without upholstery, with a seat cushion, or with seat and back cushions. Due to its shape, the two-piece cushion is also known as the “Bikini” pad.

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FIBERGL ASS SIDE CHAIR In 1948, as New York struggled to accommodate a rapidly swelling population amid a post-war housing shortage, The Museum of Modern Art anticipated the need for low-priced, but high-quality furniture, and created the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design to “commission and challenge the best design brains in the world to satisfy this long-felt need.”

One of the competition’s winners, Charles Eames, wowed the esteemed jury twice.

First, by developing an extraordinarily graceful form in stamped metal that took second place

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when the jury announced its decision in January 1949. However, by the time the jury re-assembled for the opening in June 1950, Charles, along with his wife and longtime collaborator Ray, had left stamped metal behind, along with its costs and cold feeling to the skin, and presented a fiberglass chair that succeeded in accomplishing their goal of making “the best for the most for the least”.

Indeed, the Eames had already launched the chair at the Good Design Show, which MoMA co-sponsored and was held in Chicago in January 1950.

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C O M PAC T S O FA Sleek and slender with a high back and clean lines, the Eames Compact Sofa offers all the comfort of big, cushy furniture, and yet it fits nicely in any sized room.

Charles and Ray gained inspiration for this design from a sectional seating unit built into the alcove of their Eames House living room. The design is also similar to the prototype they made for the 1951 wire sofa; however, they adapted the Sofa Compact so that it used fewer parts, eliminated much of the hand labor, and was less expensive to produce.

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LOUNGE C HAIR & OTTOMAN The Eames’ wanted their Lounge Chair and Ottoman to have the “warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt”. Often referred to as a twentiethcentury interpretation of the nineteenth-century English club chair, this seating instantly became a symbol of comfort—and comfort was one of Charles and Ray’s key objectives for this product.

The Eames’ believed that design addressed itself to the need. In this case, the need was “a special refuge from the strains of modern living”. A Playboy article on Modern Design explained that this chair “sank the sitter into a voluptuous luxury that few mortals since Nero

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have known”. The Lounge Chair is often referred to as the 670/671, after the Herman Miller part numbers used to make the seating. It combines factory technologies with intricate hand labor and craftsmanship. While today the Lounge Chair and Ottoman are icons of mid-century modern design, when the Eameses first produced the 670/671, it was noted that they had soft, wrinkly leather and plush down feathers—materials that weren’t considered modern at all.

The Lounge Chair and Ottoman can be seen in museum collections and designer homes across the globe, and it remains a symbol of luxurious comfort.

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ALUMINUM GROUP The lithe chairs of the Eames Aluminum Group have been a popular design since their introduction in 1958. And no wonder—their graceful silhouettes work well in not only home interiors, but a variety of work interiors as well.

Given that these chairs are so popular in interiors, it is interesting that the inspiration for them developed because of the need for high-quality outdoor seating. Eero Saarinen asked Charles and Ray to produce the Eames Aluminum Group Collection as a special project for his and Alexander Girard’s Irwin Miller House in Columbus, Indiana. While working on the chairs, the husband-and-wife team often referred to them as the “leisure

group” or the “indoor-outdoor group”.

The latter is revealing of the Eameses’ design philosophy. They strived to make their products perform well in addressing as many needs as possible. That a chair would work outdoors and indoors was part of their original concept.

Charles and Ray had used aluminum in earlier chair and table bases and had also experimented with stamping chair shells out of aluminum sheets for the Low-Cost Furniture Design competition; however, the Eames Aluminum Group marked their first use of the material for structural side members and represented a major departure from the concept of the chair as a solid shell. This chair and ottoman are still sold today.

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WA L N U T S T O O L S Charles and Ray designed the Eames Walnut Stools for the Time Inc. lobby, which is the same space that the Eames Lobby Chairs were first used.

The space required a durable and versatile stool that could be used as a seating perch or as a side table to rest a cup of coffee or tea. These stools may seem sculptural, but Ray Eames said the biggest challenge was making the concave surface deep enough to serve as a comfortable seat, but not so deep that it could not support a hot beverage.

The stools come in three different versions. The middle sections differ between each models, but the tops and bottoms are the same and can be used on either end.

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PL AS TIC ARMC HAIR DAL The Eames Plastic Chairs are a renewed version of the legendary Eames Fiberglass Chairs. The fiberglass seating, developed for the Low-Cost Furniture Design competition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, was the very first industrially produced chair made from that material. The DAL base was developed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1961 and first introduced to the public at Alexander Girard’s restaurant, La Fonda Del Sol, in NYC.

The original contract base was made of three parts, a cast aluminum spider, a steel tube, and cast aluminum blades. This version is made of polypropylene, two cast aluminum parts joined by fastener, and is 100% recyclable.

With its integrated armrests, the organically shaped shell of the Plastic Armchair offers superb comfort. Shells come in a broad range of colors and upholstery so that you can mix and match components and find the perfect design for your individual needs.

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34 7 3 S O FA Introduced in 1964, this Eames sofa was manufactured

by Herman Miller until 1973.With its high back and angled seat, supported by solid cast aluminum legs, it is similar in shape to the Sofa Compact.

The seat and back were each constructed out of a single piece of plywood with an angle molded into the back section. The pads for the back and the seat were made of 3-inch thick urethane foam, covered by a 1 inch layer of dacron. In the end, the amount of detailing on the design ultimately made this sofa too expensive to produce.

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S O F T PA D Both rich and voluptuous, the Eames Soft Pad Group offers a seating experience that adapts to the body of each sitter.

In terms of both construction and shape, the Soft Pad Chairs are similar to the design of the Aluminum Group, but their sewn-on cushions create a striking contrast to the slender Aluminum profiles.

The Seams on the cushions feature a doubleneedle top stitch—a technically difficult and timeconsuming detail, but one that results in a durable, long-lasting product.

The Eames Soft Pad Group comes in a number of options well suited for a variety of environments.

The EA 205/207/208 provide comfort and a prestigious ambience in meeting and conference settings, while the EA 215/216 and EA 222/223 are an ideal choice for relaxed seating in lobbies, lounges, and waiting areas.

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S O FA E S 10 8 The Eames Sofa ES108 was the last piece of furniture that was actually produced by the Eames Office.

Ray, along with Office staff, completed the design after Charles died in 1978. It went into production in 1984 and has been manufactured by Herman Miller ever since. The husband-and-wife team designed the Sofa to complement their plush Soft Pad Chairs and sleek Chaise. Exhibiting what Charles liked to call the “honest use of materials� the Eames Sofa features a harmonious combination of rich walnut or teak, soft leather, and polished aluminum. Equally fitting for the contemporary home or office, it is a luxurious place to settle back and relax.

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VITRA- & HERMAN MILLER-MADE

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PLASTIC ARMCHAIR Eames Plastic Chairs introduced a new furniture typology that has since become widespread: The multifunctional chair whose shell can be combined with a variety of different bases.

As early as 1950, Charles and Ray presented a series of bases that enabled various sitting positions. An especially striking model is the DAR (dining height armchair rod base), with the so-called Eiffel Tower base. It is an intricate and graceful design made of steel wire that inimitably combines light, elegant forms with structural strength.

Charles and Ray Eames believed that “design is a method of action”, and they continually updated their work as new materials became available.

Their Molded Plastic chairs were originally designed in metal and entered as a prototype in MoMA’s 1948 International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design. They then changed the material to fiberglass in 1950, and today the chairs are made of recyclable polypropylene. Charles was dissatisfied with the fiberglass, and it was not until after his death that the matte finish he desired was achieved, thanks to advances in materials.

The chairs can be used in numerous settings, such as dining rooms, living rooms, office spaces, cafés, waiting areas, auditoriums, terraces, and, even, gardens.

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PLASTIC SIDE CHAIR Charles and Ray developed this seating shortly after their Eames Molded Plastic Armchair. They figured that if they could first successfully design and produce the more complicated armchair, then relatively speaking, creating the side chair would be easy.

As it turns out, the side chair had its own challenges. The earliest attempts did not stand up to regular use and developed cracks at the point where the back melded into the seat.

The first Eames Molded Plastic Armchairs were displayed and later put on sale in 1950, while the side chairs—reinforced after careful measurement and trial and error—were not introduced until one year later.

The rod-style base holding up this seat makes it the lightest weight Eames chair available today, but it is still as strong and durable as every other chair that Charles and Ray designed.

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MOLDED WOOD C HAIR The Eames Molded Wood Side Chair realizes the Eames’ decades-long effort to make a single-form wood shell chair.

This design was born out of Charles’ early investigations molding plywood at Cranbrook Academy with Eero Saarinen in 1939, which he then continued with Ray at the Eames studio in Venice, California.

Exemplary of the Eameses’ iterative process and their desire to make “the best for the most for the least”, the Eames Molded

Wood Side Chair’s single-shell form is the result of a process that gives wood veneer the extra flexibility it needs to be molded into the complex curves, making it a warm, authentic and elegant dining chair option for any space. This authentic form is achieved with the help of today’s 3-D veneer technology, a process that gives wood veneer the extra flexibility it needs to be molded into single-shelled complex curves.

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