Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair Wood Base

Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair Wood Base (LCW)

Time magazine called the LCW “the chair of the century”. It was first made available to the public in 1946, and we still make it in the same configuration today. In 1945, as the sense grew that the war was coming to a close, the Eames Office, now two years old and some 15 people strong, turned its attention away from wartime work and back to furniture.

By 1945, when the Eames Molded Plywood Group was introduced to potential distribution partners, and 1946, when the Eames LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) was introduced to the public in a rather grand way, at the Museum of Modern Art, Charles and Ray had many years of plywood experience under their belt. Charles had used plywood for the Kleinhans Auditorium, the Crow Island School chairs, and the Organic Design competition chairs. Charles and Ray co-designed the Eames Leg Splint, molded of plywood with the compound curves characteristic of what they then called the “Eames process,” which was patented.

The Eames LCW is lightweight, and the parts were susceptible to mass production, using the “Eames process,” by which the actual sheets of plywood were formed at the same time as the compound curves were imposed. Using a homemade device, Charles and Ray called the “Kazaam” machine (referencing stage magicians, who put one object in a box and pull out a distinctly different one, Ala Kazaam!), perfected molding in their own residential apartment on Strathmore Avenue in West Los Angeles. The first plywood pieces got their shape from balloons, which Charles and Ray filled with air supplied by a bicycle pump!

With the important experience of the war years behind them, Charles and Ray pushed harder than ever. If there were a way to make a single-piece shell of molded plywood in complex curves, the Eames Office would find it. The office began working toward introducing the furniture at a December 1945 show at the Barclay Hotel, where the Eames LCW made its debut.

Charles and Ray and the office staff were pushing—and pushing—the limits of the material. What was the honest use of molded plywood? Could it be a single-piece shell in complex curves? The cast of characters for the Barclay Hotel show was beginning to take shape in Charles’s mind, but the headliners (meaning the single-piece shells) were not ready. Legs developed that used curved wood. Three-legged chairs with metal legs, case goods, and tables, but always the frustration of the shell. Each time a split was necessary to make the curve work.

In the end, they abandoned the idea of a single-piece shell and instead broke it into two parts: a seat and a back. They had finally uncovered the honest use of molded plywood. The Eames LCW, the chair that resulted in 1945, is now an icon of American design.

Breaking the Mold — Simple, comfortable, and effortlessly elegant, the Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair with Wood Base is a study in graceful balance and form.

Product details

Honored by Time magazine as the Best Design of the 20th Century, this molded plywood chair began as an experiment, created via a machine that molded plywood with the help of heat and a bicycle pump. Today, the low-slung chair features an expertly crafted molded seat and back that cradles you in comfort. To echo the editors of Time, the Eames molded plywood lounge chair is "something elegant, light, and comfortable. Much copied, but never bettered." This timeless wood lounge chair is available in three woodgrains and two solid stains that are sure to make a style statement.

Molded five-ply seat and back, with eight-ply legs and back brace.

Available with or without wool upholstery.

Rubber shock mounts prevent jarring movements.

Hailed by Time as the Best Design of the 20th Century.

Comes with Authenticity Certificate.

Family-Friendly Description: Flexible foam core and washable surface

Designer

Charles and Ray Eames

Through their furniture, corporate projects, World’s Fair displays, and in the aesthetics of their own California Case Study home, the Eameses exemplified modern living in postwar America. The Eames Lounge and Ottoman, introduced by Herman Miller in 1956, remains a touchstone of American style.

Low-slung, with an expertly crafted molded seat and back (no bike pumps are used today), this chair cradles you in a comfortable position while rubber shock mounts buffer against jarring movement.

Material & Feature:

Molded five-ply seat and back

Ash wood veneer with American Walnut or Natural Oak stain

Rubber shock mounts

Dimensions:

Width: 22" x Depth: 24.25" x Height: 26.25"

Seat Height: 15.5"

Charles and Ray Eames

Through their furniture, corporate projects, World’s Fair displays, and in the aesthetics of their own California Case Study home, the Eameses exemplified modern living in postwar America. The Eames Lounge and Ottoman, introduced by Herman Miller in 1956, remains a touchstone of American style.

U.S.A. (1907–1978) (1912–1988)

Charles and Ray Eames

Postwar American Modernists at Play Through their furniture, corporate projects, World’s Fair displays, and in the aesthetics of their own California Case Study home, the Eameses exemplified modern living in postwar America. The Eames Lounge and Ottoman, introduced by Herman Miller in 1956, remains a touchstone of American style.

Charles and Ray Eames’ designs were a colorful, ergonomic, and even cozy approach to modern furniture. They pioneered the use of new materials—molded plywood and fiberglass chairs, desks and storage units set on wire frames—challenging old ideas about what furniture should be made of. They met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where Charles intended to study industrial design and Ray was an aspiring abstract painter. They collaborated with Eero Saarinen on a molded plywood chair for MoMA’s Organic Furniture Competition. During World War II, the Eameses were commissioned by the Navy to develop splints and stretchers using their molded plywood technique.

After the war, they established the Eames Office in Venice, California, and their prototypes became a product in 1946 when Herman Miller introduced the Eames molded plywood chair. With innovative touches like rubber shock absorbers, it seemed to anticipate its user’s comfort. In 1956, they introduced the Lounge Chair and Ottoman. Their riff on a leather club chair, Charles and Ray Eames’ lounge chair remains a beloved piece of 20th-century furniture.

Their Pacific Palisades home (built for Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study program) was filled with flowers, folk art, and Hans Hofmann paintings suspended from the ceiling—the living embodiment of their brand of vibrant, California modernism. They were also design ambassadors, producing a multi-screen presentation inside a dome by Buckminster Fuller for the American Exposition in Moscow in 1959. Their 1977 short film “Powers of Ten” explored scale in nature and design, from the smallest particles to the outer reaches of the universe. The film’s attentiveness and soaring perspective seems to capture the ethos of Charles and Ray Eames furniture: a belief that every gesture matters. “The details are not details,” Charles once said. “They make the product.”