Eames Plastic Armchair DAW

Initially the Eames Plastic Chairs were made of fibreglass reinforced polyester resin. In the 1940s and 1950s the material was considered revolutionary as it provided a hitherto not achievable flexible formability and had a very pleasant feel. It was also affordable for the masses. From the beginning of the 1940s Eames furniture in the U.S. was manufactured by Herman Miller. In the 1950s, Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, the founders of the then fledgling company Vitra, discovered the Eames chairs on a trip through the USA and quickly negotiated the licenses to produce Eames designs in Europe and Asia. In 1993 however the production of Eames Armchairs and Side Chairs was halted: for Vitra the continued use of fibreglass for the Eames chairs was no longer considered environmentally justifiable. Fortunately in 1999 a new material was found and the production was resumed. Polypropylene could be just as easily formed as fibreglass, was and is however recyclable. In America Herman Miller also switched production of the Eames Chairs to polypropylene.

It is perhaps not so far from the truth to say that the unique relationship between Charles and Ray Eames contributed to what made, and makes, their designs so special. Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Ray Kaiser in 1912 in Sacramento. The pair met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen we working on the preparations for the MoMA New York's "Organic Furniture Competition" and the art student Ray Kaiser was appointed to assist them. The following year the two married and in the decades that followed developed an extensive portfolio of graphic designs, films, toys, textiles, photographs, architecture, and last but not least the famous furniture designs.

With their oeuvre Charles and Ray Eames significantly shaped mid-20th century modernism; for all in that they freed the domestic space from the clinical control of pre-war modernism, and instead ushered in a homely aesthetic and use-oriented furniture designs and accessories. Of which the Eames chairs are fantastic examples. Charles Eames died on 21 August 1978, the next day Ray Eames closed the Eames Studio in Los Angeles. 10 years later, on August 21, 1988 Ray Eames died.

For both Europe and the United States, the years after the Second World War were years of change. Change that led to new values. New requirements. new consumption. A new culture. These new requirements were met head-on by Charles and Ray Eames with, amongst others projects, the DAW and the other members of the plastic chair family. A particular challenge of the period was the ever-increasing demand for housing and the rising prices per square meter. Facts which combined with the consequence that the average American living room was getting smaller. Furniture therefore had to be flexible and multi-functional. The Eames chairs achieved this partly because of the many possible combinations available, and partly due to their pleasing, versatile, design.