Who hasn't already seen these design chairs, sleek and contemporary furniture signed by the names of the spouses Ray and Charles Eames in the fifties ? The collection, an icon of 20th century design, includes various models that match all styles and all kinds of interior ambience. These pieces are, today, unmistakably vintage and prized by collectors and nostalgic alike.
Charles Eames was an American architect who studied in the 1920s and 30s. He opened his architectural firm and won first prize in a design competition with one of his collaborators, before continuing his studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Arts, where he taught industrial design. There he met Ray Kaiser, his future wife and assistant:Ray and Charles became a real couple of designers, still legendary today. Their first creation was released in 1956, the Lounge Chair; then follow a series of chairs in different shapes and colors, with a work of texture:fiberglass, plywood... A copy of the Eames Lounge chair wood (in wood) is in the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York.
One or more models of Eames chairs at home, it's high class! And for good reason, prices range from 150EUR to 6000EUR per piece for the rarest models. Eames chairs are regularly reissued by Vitra in Europe, and Herman Miller in the United States:a distinction is thus made between 100% original pieces, i.e. entirely from the period, semi-original pieces (remade on a base of era) and reissues. There are also, of course, counterfeits... The real question to ask is what type of chair do you want for your home (there are about ten "common" models).
Each model is recommended for one or more uses in the 1952 Herman Miller catalog:dining chair, home use, desk chair (dining chair, for domestic use, office chair)… The detail that differs is the shape and the color of course but also the feet, which are in chromed metal, in walnut, sometimes in an alloy of the two. There is a "rocking chair" model called RAR - the names of the collection are all enigmatic, because they are actually acronyms:RAR for R docking A rmchair R odbase, DAX for D ining A rmchair X -base, etc. These full names describe the product and the suggested use. As for the colors, they are 27 in number in the original catalog. If some of them are in high demand, others on the contrary are extremely rare.
The easiest models to find are the DSS, DSX and DSR, which were mass produced (Dining Side X-base, Rodbase and "Stacking" i.e. stackable, or even "Scholastic" since these chairs were designed for school use). The seat is entirely made of fiberglass, which has the advantage of not scratching or bending over the years. The 100% original copies are obviously rare collector's items. You can find Eames chairs on Amazon or Ebay (about 60EUR) but they are often copies, or even at designer furniture antique dealers such as L'atelier 159:these offer reissues and semi-original chairs, from 300EUR at 600EUR.
