My BlackBerry rings at all hours of the day and night. Right now, in Athens, I’m two hours ahead of England, ten hours ahead of my children in California, and six hours behind Tokyo, where I spent just a few hours this week. The first piece, known as the dragon armchair, was created by art deco designer Eileen Gray, and is just 24 inches tall with wooden arms carved like serpents. I can’t imagine sitting in it to enjoy a movie — it might make a nice footrest, if you don’t mind paying almost £2m a toe. That’s the most expensive piece of 20th century design ever. So when I received the latest catalogue from Christie’s, detailing an auction of YSL’s favourite artworks to raise money for Aids, I made a point of looking to see whether there was another chair for sale.A beautiful Charles Eames leather-covered lounge chair, an icon of design. Eames was an architect who developed a technique for moulding wood which was used to make safer, stronger stretchers during the Second World War.
With his wife, Ray-Bernice, he created the most stylish and comfortable furniture — think of those impossibly cool Sixties thriller series like the Avengers and The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and you’ll know what an Eames chair looks like. The catalogue featured a photo of YSL sitting in his lounger. The most stylish man on the planet, curled up like a cat on the coolest chair… “It isn’t fair,” I told my daughter Natalie, “that one man should be able to look so good. I want to sit in that chair on my show. I’m going to buy it.” Nat burst out laughing. “Great idea, Aba,” she said. “All you have to do is sell the house first. I could tell that Hanna was just as much in love with the chair as I was. “Make a bid,” she suggested. But why not see what happens?” I trust Hanna’s intuition, so I alerted Christie’s to my interest and, yesterday afternoon, my Blackberry rang while we were stuck in Athens’ smoggy traffic. “Your lot is about to come up,” said a cultured voice in London.
“What do you wish to do?” “I’ll listen in,” I said. And within seconds, the bidding was off, racing up the thousands… The cultured voice asked whether I was still interested. I was, and I asked her to continue bidding – and I won the chair! While I did not pay £19m, some would still consider the amount I paid for the chair to be a great deal of money to pay for a piece of furniture, but for me it’s more than that, it’s a piece of history. During the same auction, I bought a sherbet spoon, made of turtle shell, coral and crystal, which will be the 5011th piece of cutlery on my Cadillac. And I purchased a 2,300-year-old terracotta statue, which I will give to the national Greek museum, in gratitude for the many hours of wonder which I have enjoyed with my family, studying the exhibits or just staring out of our hotel window at the Acropolis. But it is the lounger which I was the most excited about, this is the chair that Yves Saint Lauren would have relaxed in while coming up with idea’s for new designs.
Somewhere in the next world, I’m sure he is still designing, and I’m sure he knows that I will take very good care of his beloved chair. Whenever I visit Japan, I always call my friend, Makoto Akiyama. We first met when he was 14, in 1974, and a national phenomenon: he had astounding gifts for mind-reading and metal-bending. He traces the source of his gifts to an encounter with a UFO. “It was an inexplicable light,” he told me, “and after I saw it, things broke frequently. For example, the head of the toothbrush often snapped off, or household electrical appliances stopped working. And I began to see light glowing around other people. I studied the phenomena and gradually, I gained control over my power. Not complete control, but some.” Many Western scientists are close-minded and sceptical about the unexplained, but in Japan there is intense interest in mindpower phenomena. Between 1995 and 2000, the Ministry of Science and Technology invested one hundred million yen (£600,000) in parascience research.
Makoto has undergone countless tests and now works with major business corporations as a consultant. I believe that the crucial breakthroughs in understanding the human mind will come this century from the Far East. I saw evidence of the Japanese passion for the unexplained at an event thrown by dear friends of mine, Mr and Mrs Tanaka. They invited 2,500 people, chosen by lottery, to meet me and share energy at an arena in Tokyo. It was an amazing experience to shake hands with every member of the audience. By the end, even though I had just stepped off another flight halfway around the world, I was buzzing with excitement and adrenalin. I felt like I could have flown back to Athens on my own. We’ve found a way to beat the bomb hoaxers. Before our live show, sniffer dogs scour the studio. Then everyone who enters the building, even me and my celebrity guests, has to pass through a metal detector. Inevitably, for the third week running, we had a bomb call. But this time, because of the intense security arrangements, we were certain it was a malicious lie, and the studio audience happily shrugged off the announcements.
The show went ahead without interruptions. If anyone is familiar with the Eames lounge chair, I need advice on what type of epoxy to reglue the shock mounts with. It's really an adhesive problem. The companies that make the chair have tried different adhesives over the years. My current choice is 7522 Bostik epoxy. I am trying to adhere a hard rubber mount to wood. I am concerned about the expansion coefficient between the two materials. I believe an epoxy that dries hard will not allow this; it needs to be able to give a little. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm not familiar with the chair, but your local Ace or True Value should have a pretty good selection of epoxies for different applications. I have seen some for underwater, quick and hard, vibration, etc. The vibration one may be for you. It flexes just a little. I tried years ago to glue these rubber mounts to the backs of these chairs with various types of adhesives with no luck. They would always break off.
Get in touch with the Herman Miller Company in Michigan. They do all of the repairs and they are closemouthed about the process. These chairs are very high value... especially the original ones. These are pretty tricky to repair. They are wonderful chairs and very comfortable but that mounting plate is an obvious problematic design flaw. Over time the neoprene hardens and loses its flexibility. They come apart every 15 years or so and I believe they are constantly trying different epoxies. If at all possible I would suggest sending it to Herman Miller. Considering these chairs are worth several thousand dollars, whatever they charge might be worth it, especially if you want to keep the resale value. I never could get a straight answer from Herman Miller or the other guy in California as to what epoxy they use for repairs. If someone ever brings me another one to repair I'm going to pass on it and tell them to send it to Herman Miller! However, this is what I wound up doing before I knew better.
I bought some neoprene washers and epoxied them to some wood. One with PC7 epoxy from the hardware store and the other with Bostik 7522. I let them dry for three days and then tried to pull them loose and see which one was stronger. (Quick drying 5 minute epoxy just isn't as strong as the longer drying stuff.) The Bostik 7522 was a little bit stronger and also dried not quite as hard as the PC7 so I think it will give a little with the stresses of the chair. I also put new 1/4" dowels in each mounting pad, countersunk partway into the chair panel. You have to be very careful not to drill all the way through! I read on another forum about using E6000 industrial strength multi-purpose adhesive from TAP Plastic, made by Eclectic Products, Inc. Old neoprene shockmounts oxidize, the neoprene rubber becomes stiff and powdery, and is irreparable. They should be replaced. Glue will only hold the surface of the neoprene, but when the neoprene oxidizes, it lacks internal cohesivity, and the surface of the neoprene pulls away from the neoprene below, so that it cannot possibly hold for long.
People trying to reglue an old mount are risking a much more serious problem, because when a shock mount gives way, the back of the chair can swing backward and rotate around the "ear" of the lower shell on the opposite side, snapping the plywood ear off, and creating damages that are much more complicated to repair, and involve partially re-laminating the inside of the lower shell, saving the outer veneer to retain the flitch pattern. A routine conservation repair, but invasive and expensive. Concerning the shockmount types, we can use the neoprene/steel threaded plate sandwich design that Herman Miller uses, but our opinion is that that design is the biggest flaw we have ever seen in modern furniture, and should not be repeated. Their new lounge chairs carry a 3 year warranty, all other furniture a 15 year warranty. There is no mystery as to what they are telling us. A superior, proprietary design we developed is to use ebonized solid beech wood plates with the same radiused shapes (in three dimensions) as the neoprene originals, with holes drilled into the beech plates, into which T-nuts are inserted, with neoprene bushing around the T-nuts, to provide the shock mount flexibility, without its fallibility.
The glue joint between beech and the plywood is trouble free for many more decades than Herman Miller's design. We have repaired many Eames lounge chairs since the early 1960's with our original shock mount design, and have not had any failures. You cannot tell the difference by looking at or feeling the improved mounts; they are finished by our artists to match the original neoprene. You can send the lower back shell and the seat shell to us (Olek Lejbzon & Co.) disassembled in a box, and we will repair and ship disassembled, for you to reassemble (simple screws). Over time you will find that your Eames Lounge chair may start to sag. This is the time to have the old shock mounts removed and replaced. Over the last decade Humemodern has made the whole procedure as simple and failsafe as possible. No "nut and block" alternatives are used, just quality tried and tested parts are installed using our formulated bonding system. Would you like to add information to this article?
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