While researching our post "Eames Alchemy. Or how Charles and Ray Eames turned steel into plastic….." the most remarkable discovery came in the New York Museum of Modern Arts' press release announcing the opening of the Low-Cost Furniture Design Exhibition:1 "Perhaps the greatest advantage of this chair is the extraordinary lustre and soft, smooth surface of the plastic which, strengthened by the silky threads of glass imbedded within it, quickly absorb room temperatures. Never before used in
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"The new Eames plastic chair is a dream fulfilled"1 While one can, should, accuse the Walker Art Centre Minneapolis of being somewhat hyperbolic in their 1950 guide to "Useful Objects", there is no arguing with the fact that with their family of moulded fibreglass chairs Charles and Ray Eames took furniture design into uncharted territory. Or as Peter Smithson writes, "Before Eames no chairs (of the modern canon) were many coloured, or really light in weight, or not fundamentally rectangular
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