An Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman on museum display. Photo sailko, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Eames Lounge Chair
What it took directly
- statedThe Eames Lounge Chair took from the look of a well-used first baseman's mitt"The leather cushions do have built-in wrinkles to start with, but that is a clue that spells comfort to come, like the warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt." Charles and Ray Eames, in their hang-tag text for early chairs (Eames Foundation)
- statedThe Lounge Chair's aluminum back supports took from Don Albinson's trials of many back connections"had Don (Albinson) try many back connections and it is now two thin cast triangular sections." Ray Eames, letter to Charles, August 1955 (quoted by Daniel Ostroff, Eames Institute)
- documentedThe Eames Lounge Chair took from a full-scale prototype the Eameses made in 1945"An early prototype made in 1945, which is now in the Institute’s collection thanks to a recent generous donation, begins to make that history visible." Daniel Ostroff, Eames Institute (on the 1945 prototype in its collection)
- documentedThe Lounge Chair's molded plywood shells took from Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen's molded plywood chairs, winners of MoMA's 1941 Organic Design in Home Furnishings contest"When Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen's molded plywood chair prototypes won MoMA’s Organic Designs in Home Furnishings Contest in 1941, bent plywood was already in use for furniture." Herman Miller's history of the chair
What it learned to do
- documentedCharles and Ray Eames learned from Kazam!, the plywood-molding machine they built in the spare bedroom of their apartment"going so far as to build their own plywood molding device they called Kazam! in the spare bedroom of their small apartment" Herman Miller's history of the chair
- documentedCharles and Ray Eames learned from designing molded plywood leg splints and aircraft parts for the U.S. military in World War II"During World War II, the Eameses designed molded plywood leg splints and aircraft parts for the United States military." Herman Miller's history of the chair
- documentedThe Eames Lounge Chair learned from the Eameses' way of molding plywood in more than one plane at once"The new point about the Eames plywood technique was that the plywood was moulded into curves of more than one plane." Victoria and Albert Museum, catalogue entry for a working drawing of the chair
- documentedCharles Eames learned from Eero Saarinen: break a problem into its parts, study each, recombine"That working method is close to what Charles Eames later described as “Eero Saarinen’s trick”—dividing a problem into essential elements, studying each one repeatedly, and then recombining them without losing the quality found in the parts." Daniel Ostroff, Eames Institute, quoting Charles Eames's phrase "Eero Saarinen's trick"
- documentedRay Eames studied under the painter Hans Hofmann"Ray studied painting under Hans Hofmann, whose abstract-expressionist work built on ideas developed by Wassily Kandinsky, a modernist painter and teacher at the Bauhaus." Herman Miller's history of the chair
- inferredThe Eames Lounge Chair comes from the wartime plywood work, which paid for the Eameses' first production capacity"The war operation provided the Eameses with the funding they needed to expand their manufacturing capabilities, and by 1945, they had developed molded plywood furniture prototypes that were ready for mass production." inferred — Herman Miller says the war work funded the Eameses' manufacturing and gave them production-ready plywood prototypes by 1945, the year of the Lounge Chair's first known prototype (Eames Institute); neither source draws the line to this chair directly
The tradition it sits in
- documentedThe Eames Lounge Chair comes from the English club chair"Charles usually explained that he had the idea to devise a modern version of an English club chair." Eames Foundation, on how Charles Eames usually explained the idea
- documentedThe Eameses' molded plywood comes from Alvar and Aino Aalto's bent plywood, which bent in only one direction at a time"It was invented by Finnish designers Alvar and Aino Aalto; however, their bent plywood technique differed from Charles' in a significant way: Where the Aaltos’ plywood panels bent in only one direction at a time" Herman Miller's history of the chair
Where the whole form comes from
- documentedThe Eames Lounge Chair comes from the modernist design ethos"A modernist design ethos and a healthy passion for molded plywood inspired many Eames designs, including the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman." Herman Miller's history of the chair
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