Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec Charles and Ray Eames Sam Hecht and Kim Colin You've been added to our mailing list. Please enter a valid email addressThe Stool 60 Giveaway. Sign up for our emails and a chance to win this ingenious stackable stool. Eames Molded Plywood Chairs In 1946, designers Charles and Ray Eames invented a process for molding thin sheets of veneer into gently curved shapes, and applied it to their groundbreaking molded plywood chair. Today, the Eames Molded Plywood Dining and Lounge chairs use the same technique to create an authentic design in an array of finish and material options. They work just about anywhere-from elegant dining rooms to eclectic bungalows, around conference room or kitchen tables.Eames Molded Plywood Chairs 3D Models / Revit See how this product can contribute to your environmental goals. "Design of the Century" by Time magazine for Eames molded plywood chair
What's In It For You A Shape that Sits Well Expanded Materials and Options Designers Charles and Ray Eames established their long and legendary relationship with Herman Miller in 1946 with their boldly original molded plywood chairs. The aesthetic integrity, enduring charm, and comfort of the chairs earned them recognition from Time magazine as The Best Design of the 20th Century. Time called the design "something elegant, light and comfortable. Much copied but never bettered." (A locomotive came in second.) Distinctive DesignYou can tell it's Eames at a glance. Lounge chair, dining chair. Both with wood or chrome-plated steel legs. Molding thin sheets of lightweight veneer into gently curved shapes gives the durable material a soft, inviting appearance. The chairs work just about anywhere—from homes and offices to schools and public areas. The chairs are offered with richly grained birch veneer in bright colors that recall the times when the chairs were introduced.
The environmentally friendly aniline stains we use allow the wood's natural characteristics to show through. You can also have them in natural cherry, walnut, and light ash. A Shape that Sits WellIn their search for a better way, Charles and Ray Eames developed an innovative technique for molding plywood. The process allowed them to bend wood furniture in new directions and give hard materials a soft look. The contours the molding process creates out of plywood fit the body's shape. The plywood has five plies, with hardwood inner plies. Natural rubber shock mounts absorb movement. Expanded Materials and OptionsWe’ve updated the existing finishes and added new material options to restore the original character of this timeless classic. The Eames Molded Plywood chair is now available in multiple upholstered fabric options and two new base finish options—a sophisticated black matte and an environmentally friendlier trivalent chrome. More choice means you are able to curate complete environments and yet still provide the same high level of quality and workmanship, regardless of the choices you make.
The story behind the Eames molded plywood chairs makes clear just how big a role imagination and serendipity play in design. In the early 1940s, when Charles Eames was working on MGM set designs, he and his wife, Ray, were experimenting with wood-molding techniques that would have profound effects on the design world. Their discoveries led to a commission from the US Navy to develop plywood splints, stretchers, and glider shells, molded under heat and pressure, that were used successfully in World War II. When the war was over, Charles and Ray applied the technology they had created to making affordable, high-quality chairs that could be mass-produced using dimensionally shaped surfaces instead of cushioned upholstery. When they found that plywood did not withstand the stresses that occurred where the chair seat and back met, they abandoned their original single-shell idea in favor of a chair that had separate molded-plywood panels for the back and seat. The process eliminated the extraneous wood needed to connect the seat with the back, which reduced the weight and visual profile of the chair and established a basis for modern furniture design.
Sculpting a seat and back to fit the contours of the human body, they designed a truly comfortable chair that's suitable for businesses and homes.Charles Eames and Ray Eames were the embodiment of the inventiveness, energy and optimism at the heart of mid-century modern American design, and have been recognized as the most influential designers of the 20th century. As furniture designers, filmmakers, artists, textile and graphic designers and even toy and puzzle makers, the Eameses were a visionary and effective force for the notion that design should be an agent of positive change. They are the happy, ever-curious, ever-adventurous faces of modernism. Charles studied architecture and industrial design. Ray (née Beatrice Alexandra Kaiser) was an artist, who studied under the abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann. They met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in suburban Detroit (where Charles also met his frequent collaborator Eero Saarinen and the artist and designer Harry Bertoia) and married the next year.
His technical skills and her artistic flair were wonderfully complementary. They moved to Los Angeles in 1941, where Charles worked on set design for MGM. In the evenings at their apartment, they experimented with molded plywood using a handmade heat-and-pressurization device they called the “Kazam!” machine. The next year, they won a contract from the U.S. Navy for lightweight plywood leg splints for wounded servicemen — they are coveted collectibles today; more so those that Ray used to make sculptures. The Navy contract allowed Charles to open a professional studio, and the attention-grabbing plywood furniture the firm produced prompted George Nelson, the director of design of the furniture-maker Herman Miller Inc., to enlist Charles and (by association, if not by contract) Ray in 1946. Some of the first Eames items to emerge from Herman Miller are now classics: the “LCW,” or Lounge Chair Wood, and the “DCM,” or Dining Chair Metal, supported by tubular steel.