EAMES LOUNGE & OTTOMAN

EAMES LOUNGE CHAIR (670) & OTTOMAN (671)
Licensed Reproduction, circa 1956
Made by Herman Miller® in US
Made by Vitra® in Europe
33″ w | 33.5″ d | 33″ h  (Classic)
33″ w | 33.5″ d | 35″ h  (New Vitra)
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The Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman, officially titled Eames Lounge (670) and Ottoman (671), were released in 1956 after years of development by designers Charles and Ray Eames for the Herman Miller furniture company. It was the first chair the Eameses designed for a high-end market. These furnishings are made of moulded plywood and leather. Examples of these furnishings are part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Charles and Ray Eames originally made the lounge chair and ottoman as a gift for their friend Billy Wilder, the director of “Some Like It Hot” and “Sunset Blvd.” The design was launched by Arlene Francis, host of NBC’s “Home” show, on that show she introduced Charles and Ray to television audiences in 1956, along with their iconic design Lounge Chair and Ottoman. The recorded launch is in the video below.

EAMES LOUNGE CHAIR DESIGN
The Eameses focused first on usability in their designs. In addition to the style, the Eames Lounge Chair is very comfortable, a combination not always found in high design. The chair has become iconic with Modern style design although when it was first made Ray Eames remarked in a letter to Charles that the chair looked “comfortable and un-designy”. Charles’s vision was for a chair with “the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt.” The chair is composed of three curved plywood shells. In modern production the shells are made up of seven thin layers of wood veneer glued together and shaped under heat and pressure. This differentiates the newer chairs from the “original” (vintage) chairs which used Brazilian rosewood veneers and were constructed of five layers of plywood. Also differentiating the very earliest sets from newer sets were rubber spacers between the aluminium spines and the wood panels first used in the earliest production models and then hard plastic washers used in later versions. In the earlier sets, the zipper around the cushions may have been brown or black as well, and in newer sets the zippers are black. The shells and the seat cushions are essentially the same shape: composed of two curved forms interlocking to form a solid mass. The chair back and headrest are identical in proportion, as are the seat and the Ottoman.

The Eameses constantly made use of new materials. The pair’s first plywood chair—the Eames Lounge Chair Wood (LCW)—made use of a heavy rubber washer glued to the backrest of the chair and screwed to the lumbar support. These washers, which have come to be called ‘shock mounts’, allow the backrest to flex slightly. This technology was brought back in the 670 Lounge chair. The backrest and headrest are screwed together by a pair of aluminium supports. This unit is suspended on the seat via two connection points in the armrests. The armrests are screwed to shock mounts on the interior of the backrest shell, allowing the backrest and headrest to flex when the chair is in use. This is part of the chair’s unusual design, as well as its weakest link. The rubber washers are solidly glued to the plywood shells, but have been known to tear free when excessive weight is applied, or when the rubber becomes old and brittle.

HERMAN MILLER & VITRA
Since its introduction, the chair has been in continuous production by Herman Miller in America. Later, Vitra (in cooperation with the German furniture company Fritz Becker KG) began producing the chair for the European market. The Two manufacturer’s design differ slightly. The main differences are mainly in the aluminium base. While both have 5 arms the cross section of each arm of the Herman Miller is ‘T’ is shaped where as the cross section on the Vitra arms are straight.

Since Charles and Ray Eames always understood design to be a continuous process – one that did not end when production began. The main goal of the Eames Lounge Chair was – and still is – to offer users maximum sitting comfort.  Since the Lounge Chair went into production more than 50 years ago, the height of the average human – depending on region – has increased by as much as 10 cm. To enable larger people to experience exceptional comfort when sitting, Vitra has – in close coordination with the Eames Office – adjusted the dimensions of the Lounge Chair. In doing so, the proportions of the seat and back shells were carefully extended in such a way that the overall visual appearance of the Eames Lounge Chair seems to hardly have changed at all. A comparison of the changes can be seen below.

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TEXT & IMAGE CREDITS
Wikipedia 2012
Herman Miller 2012
Vitra 2012

Eames – Pioneers of Mid 20th Century Design

CHARLES & RAY EAMES
In the 1950s, the Eameses continued their work in architecture and modern furniture design. As with their earlier moulded plywood work, the Eameses pioneered technologies, such as the fibreglass and plastic resin chairs and the wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller. From the beginning, the Eames furniture has usually been listed as by Charles Eames. In the 1948 and 1952 Herman Miller bound catalogues, only Charles’ name is listed, but it has become clear that Ray was deeply involved and should be considered an equal partner.The Eames fabrics (many are currently available from Maharam) were mostly designed by Ray, as were the Time Life Stools.In 1979, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Charles and Ray with the Royal Gold Medal. At the time of Charles’ death they were working on what became their last production, the Eames Sofa, which went into production in 1984.

Charles and Ray channelled Charles’ interest in photography into the production of short films. From their first film, the unfinished Travelling Boy (1950), to Powers of Ten (re-released in 1977), their cinematic work was an outlet for ideas, a vehicle for experimentation and education. The couple often produced short films in order to document their interests, such as collecting toys and cultural artefacts on their travels. The films also record the process of hanging their exhibits or producing classic furniture designs. Some of their other films cover more intellectual topics. For example, one film covers the purposely mundane topic of filming soap suds moving over the pavement of a parking lot. Powers of Ten (narrated by the late physicist Philip Morrison), gives a dramatic demonstration of orders of magnitude by visually zooming away from the earth to the edge of the universe, and then microscopically zooming into the nucleus of a carbon atom.

The Eameses also conceived and designed a number of exhibitions. The first of these, Mathematica: a world of numbers…and beyond (1961), was sponsored by IBM, and is the only one of their exhibitions still extant.The Mathematica exhibition is still considered a model for science popularization exhibitions. It was followed by A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age (1971) and The World of Franklin and Jefferson (1975–1977), among others.

Eames Demetrios, their grandson, shows rarely seen films and archival footage in a lively, loving tribute to their creative process below in a TED web video.

THE EAMES & FURNITURE DESIGN
The office of Charles and Ray Eames, which functioned for more than four decades (1943–88) at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California, included in its staff, at one time or another, a number of remarkable designers, like Henry Beer and Richard Foy, now co-chairmen of CommArts, Inc.; Don Albinson; Deborah Sussman; Harry Bertoia; and Gregory Ain, who was Chief Engineer for the Eameses during World War II. Among the many important designs originating there are the moulded-plywood DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and DCM (Dining Chair Metal with a plywood seat) (1945), Eames Lounge Chair (1956), the Aluminium Group furniture (1958) and as well as the Eames Chaise (1968).

With a grand sense of adventure, Charles and Ray Eames turned their curiosity and boundless enthusiasm into creations that established them as a truly great husband-and-wife design team. Their unique synergy led to a whole new look in furniture. Lean and modern. Playful and functional. Sleek, sophisticated, and beautifully simple. That was and is the “Eames look.” That look and their relationship with Herman Miller started with moulded plywood chairs in the late 1940s and includes the world-renowned Eames lounge chair, now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Charles and Ray achieved their monumental success by approaching each project the same way: Does it interest and intrigue us? Can we make it better? Will we have “serious fun” doing it?

They loved their work, which was a combination of art and science, design and architecture, process and product, style and function. “The details are not details,” said Charles. “They make the product.” A problem-solver who encouraged experimentation among his staff, Charles once said his dream was “to have people working on useless projects. These have the germ of new concepts.”

Their own concepts evolved over time, not overnight. As Charles noted about the development of the Moulded Plywood Chairs, “Yes, it was a flash of inspiration,” he said, “a kind of 30-year flash.”

With these two, one thing always seemed to lead to another. Their revolutionary work in moulded plywood led to their breakthrough work in moulded fibreglass seating. A magazine contest led to their highly innovative “Case Study” house.

A design critic once said that this extraordinary couple “just wanted to make the world a better place.” That they did. They also made it a lot more interesting.

Over the years the Eames office have been recognised for many things some of the most influential are noted below:

– Organic Furniture Competition, Museum of Modern Art, 1940
– Emmy Award, (Graphics), “The Fabulous Fifties,” 1960
– Kaufmann International Design Award, 1961
– 25 Year American Institute of Architects Award, 1977
– Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry, Harvard, 1971
– Queen’s Gold Medal for Architecture, 1979
– “Most Influential Designer of the 20th Century, IDSA 1985

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TEXT CREDITS
Wikipedia (2012)
TED (2009)
Herman Miller (2012)