The Eames Office Chair: A Design Classic

Charles and Ray Eames remain amongst the greatest designers of the modern era. True polymaths, they created groundbreaking films, buildings and textiles. In furniture, they produced iconic designs that combined sleek aesthetics, major technical achievements and, above all else, comfort. Today, their legacy lives on in a whole of range of Eames chair inspired by their work. Amongst the Eameses' most famous designs was the Aluminium Group, commonly known these days as Eames office chairs.

The design was born out of a challenge set almost sixty years ago. The noted architects Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard were designing the home of industrialist J. Irwin Miller: a house which has since been declared a National Historic Landmark. The house was to be the epitome of modern design and its interior uncluttered, but homely. Girard was a long time collaborator of the Eameses and asked them to design high-quality seating that could be used both inside and outside the house.

Charles and Ray Eames’ chair was to be a revolution. The seat frame was made from cast aluminium, making it light enough to be moved in and out fo the house easily, whilst also being strong enough to resist the inevitable bumps and knocks. The frame was designed to support a stretched synthetic mesh. The material was secure, but fitted loosely enough that it could conform to the body of anyone sitting in it. This mesh was not a standard cover for the seat, but an integral, load bearing part of the chair’s design. This form of seat suspension was a major technical breakthrough, throwing out the rulebook that had existed since the Ancient Greeks which said chairs should be a solid shell.

The potential of this Eames chair was quickly realised. The Miller House was completed in 1957 and in 1958 the chair was released to the mass market as the Aluminium Group and has been on sale ever since. There have been some notable changes over the years. Though designed for both indoor and outdoor use, nowadays the chairs are used almost exclusively indoors and have become associated with corporate environments such as offices, boardrooms and the like: hence the unofficial title “the Eames Office Chair”. To accommodate this change of environment, the original synthetic mesh was removed. It was designed for outdoor use and its removal allowed a wider variety of fabrics and upholstery to be fitted. New fittings have included different, more modern forms of mesh, fabric upholstery and, perhaps most famously, black padded leather.

Nowadays, the Eames’s legacy lives on in a range of chairs inspired by the Eames office chair. These new designs borrow many of the chair’s key features while continuing the process of innovation that the original designers so valued. In describing his design philosophy, Charles Eames used the parable of a banana leaf; used as a simple dish in southern India, the banana leaf was gradually made more and more ornate, until some finally returned to just using the simple leaf.

"I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of, but it's that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf" This philosophy of returning to and recognising the elegance of simplicity can be seen in the designs the Eames have inspired.

The Chair You Didn't Realise You Knew

When they unveiled the Eames Lounge Chair in 1956, Charles and Ray Eames described their new design as being “comfortable and un-designy”. Despite that, this it has gone on to become an icon of the Modern movement, appearing in films and television series as diverse as “Iron Man”, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “House”. It has also inspired a wide range of replicas, some of which have even been hailed as better than the original.

You may not know it, but you've seen an Eames Lounge Chair. OK, OK, I’m no mind reader, but the Eames Lounge Chair is an icon of modern American design. First launched in 1956 as the Eames Lounge (670) and Ottoman (671) (the latter being the small footstool that comes with it), the chair’s co-designer Charles Eames described it as being "comfortable and un-designy". It’s that discrete, familiar comfort that made this most famous Eames chair (for Charles and his wife Ray designed many) an icon of the Modern movement and as ubiquitous a piece of unshowy but stylish design as a Vettriano painting.

It’s also why I knowyou’ve seen one. Even if you don’t think you have. Joey and Chandler had one in their apartment in “Friends”. Donald Draper and Dr Gregory House both have them in their offices. Doctor Who took a doze in one back in the Sixties. It’s hard to describe the piece without pictures, but I’ll try. The Eames chair almost resembles a bucket seat in design. Its back, arms and seat are joined together by aluminium supports. The whole thing leans slightly backwards on its swivel base, elevating the sitter’s legs and giving them little option but to relax their weight backwards into the seat. The raising of the sitter's legs makes the accompanying footstool (it's that Ottoman again) near essential and the whole thing almost ridiculously comfortable.

My citation of so many television appearances isn’t accidental. You can't seperate the reasons for the Eames Lounge Chair's versatility and its many appearances in popular culture. It was unveiled in 1956, on the “Home” show, NBC’s hugely popular daytime magazine programme fronted by actress and game show panellist Arlene Francis. A huge advertising campaign followed immediately. The campaign - which showed the Eames chair in a variety of unlikely locales including a hay field, a Victorian parlour and on the front porch of a house straight out of the America Gothic - focused on the Eames chair’s versatility. It’s that same versatility which explains its continuous place in popular culture - and, in particular, the American popular imagination. The Eames Lounge Chair is comfortable yet smart, stylish yet understated. That’s why it can sit as easily in Frasier’s luxurious Seattle apartment as it can in Iron Man’s cluttered workshop.

The Eames Lounge Chair has been in continuous production ever since. In America, Herman Miller have continued to turn out units since its premier in 1956, while Vitra have continued to produce it for the American market. It has also inspired replicas, imitations and knock offs of varying quality - China being the source of many. Some replicas can be of extremely poor quality. Spray painted cushions, exposed screws and poor quality materials are amongst the complaints that have come from those who bought cheap, fast buck knock offs. On the other hand, some replica Eames Lounge Chairs have been hailed as even better than the originals, offering increased versatility and the option to customise the colours of your purchase to fit your tastes and the design of your home or office.

The Eames Lounge Chair has long been an icon of usability and style. You’ve seen it so many times that you don’t even realise it. Now you’ve come to understand why it’s so popular, maybe it’s time you started paying it a bit more attention.