Eames Lounge Chair

The Lounge Chair and its Ottoman may be the most famous modern armchair in the world. It was designed by Charles and Ray Eames and introduced by the American company Herman Miller in 1956, after years of development. It is in the permanent collection of MoMA.

A luxury chair, for once

The Eameses worked mostly on furniture that could be mass-produced and sold at affordable prices. The Lounge Chair is the exception: their first chair designed for the high-end market. The starting point was the traditional English club chair, comfortable and welcoming. Charles wanted it to have “the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt”; Ray, seeing it finished, wrote that it looked “comfortable and un-designy”.

Three wooden shells

The chair is made of three moulded plywood shells, headrest, back and seat, shaped under heat and pressure and covered with veneer. On top sit the leather cushions, which follow the shape of the shells. Back and headrest share the same proportions, as do seat and ottoman; their official names are 670 and 671. Until the early 1990s the veneer was Brazilian rosewood; it was then replaced by cherry, walnut and other woods, including a sustainably grown rosewood.

From television to the world

The Lounge Chair made its debut in 1956 on television, on Arlene Francis's programme Home, and Herman Miller launched it with advertisements showing it in the most varied settings. It has never gone out of production in the United States; for Europe it is made by Vitra. Its very success has also made it one of the most copied and counterfeited pieces of furniture: its labels and small construction details, which changed over the decades, help collectors recognise and date originals.

Sources

• Eames Lounge Chair – Wikipedia