Eames Plastic Armchair RE LAR

The Eames Plastic Chairs are an integral part of contemporary homes and museums. But in the mid-twentieth century they wrote furniture history: developed by the designer couple Charles and Ray Eames in context of the MoMA's "Low Cost Furniture Design" competition in 1948, the collection of multi-purpose chairs to which the LAR belongs and their seat shells, which were perfectly adapted to the body, were an absolute novelty at that time. Previously, Ray and Charles Eames had experimented with a variety of materials and manufacturing processes, until they finally made the breakthrough with fiberglass-reinforced polyester resin: the recently discovered material was not only flexible, but also more cost effective than many other materials, thus the first mass-produced plastic chairs ever came onto the market with the famous collection of Eames Armchairs and Eames Side Chairs, while the ability to combine the seat shells with different bases for different seating positions allowed for enormous variety within the collection. The LAR - short for "Lounge Height Armchair Rod Base" - was one of the favourite designs of Charles and Ray Eames as a low lounge chair, historical footage shows the LAR in numerous places in their home, the legendary Eames House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. Thanks to its steel wire base, it has earned the charming nickname "Cat's Cradle", but it also resembles the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Ray and Charles Eames originally designed the Plastic Side Chairs and Plastic Armchairs from the then unknown fiberglass-reinforced polyester resin. The chairs were the first serially produced synthetic chairs in furniture history. The Eames chairs were distributed by the American furniture producer Herman Miller and brought to Europe via Willi and Erika Fehlbaum with their very young company Vitra; before a few decades later, the then still revolutionary material, began to be considered ecologically untenable. The sustainable acting enterprise Vitra drew the consequences and stopped the production of the Eames Plastic Chairs from fiber glass in 1993. It was not until 1999 or 2004, when production from recyclable polypropylene was possible, that the Swiss company included the Eames Chairs back in their range. In the US Eames DSW et al. have since been made from more ecological polypropylene via Herman Miller. Thanks to the latest high-tech production methods, since 2018 Vitra has again been able to produce the Eames Fiberglass Chairs in their original material, albeit in a more sustainable way. The LAR was manufactured by Vitra until 1968, when it no longer complied with the then existing safety standards. In 2019, the LAR was relaunched following the completion of a series of modifications by Vitra in cooperation with the Eames Office.

Born in St. Louis in 1907, Charles Eames and Sacramento-born artist Ray Kaiser, later Ray Eames, created unique designs and made a major impact on the furniture style of the Mid-Century and beyond. Charles and Ray Eames met in 1940 at the Cranbook Academy of Art, where he directed the Department of Industrial Design and she studied painting. At that time Ray Kaiser assisted Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen in their preparations for the "Organic Furniture Competition" of the MoMA in New York. Married in 1941 the Eames' created, in addition to meticulously planned furniture design, graphics, textiles, film, exhibition design and photography. Both complement each other in a unique way: Charles Eames focused on technical details, Ray Eames dedicated herself to the aesthetics and graphic elements of her designer pieces. This is how the Eames Plastic Arm and Side Chair Collection came into being - functionally sophisticated and in appealing colour variations, which were mixed and tested in innumerable procedures by the designer couple Eames. In their famous Eames house in the Pacific Palisades district in Los Angeles, Charles and Ray Eames have artistically realized themselves. The house, completed in 1949, housed a studio from which they repeatedly revolutionized furniture design. Their designer furniture and home accessories had a significant impact on the breakthrough of modernity, were thoughtful and functional. When Charles Eames died on August 21st 1978, Ray Eames closed the Eames Studio in Los Angeles. Ray Eames died exactly ten years later.

Manufacturer

Historical context

Since the 1940s, the Eames Chairs, such as the LAR, have been produced by Herman Miller in the United States. Some ten years later the designs also came to Europe, after Vitra founders Erika and Willi Fehlbaum discovered the Eames Chairs during their trip to the USA in 1953, conducted many negotiations in the following years and finally acquired the licensing rights for Europe and the Middle East. Since 1959, the Swiss designer furniture manufacturer Vitra is the only authorized manufacturer of Eames designs for these regions and produces the Eames LAR and other Eames design furniture as well as home accessories. The Fehlbaums maintained a close relationship with the designers Charles and Ray Eames. So the physical Eames archive is not in the hands of Herman Miller or the Eames family, but Vitra. The furniture manufacturer is also highly ambitious and actively involved in the field of young designers: With the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, the company has created a true oasis for advanced architecture and design ideas. The on-site Vitra Design Museum and Design Gallery also contribute to the versatile and modern image of Vitra with their exhibitions on design, art and culture.

The 1940s and 1950s were a time of upheaval in the US and Europe. Needs changed, consumer societies emerged, housing demand increased, living space was therefore rare and so the furniture industry was faced with the challenge to develop multifunctional and flexible furniture. European functionalism with its representatives, such as Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto, also found access to the American design furniture market, and to Charles and Ray Eames. With their innovative ideas of moulded Eames Chairs with inter-changable bases, Charles and Ray Eames won 2nd place in 1948 at the MoMA's "Low Cost Furniture Design" contest. With military research from the end of the Second World War, Charles and Ray Eames further developed their designs: with fiberglass-reinforced polyester resin for their Eames Plastic Chair collection. The names of their plastic chairs all consist of abbreviations and are remnants of military-bureaucratic understanding from war days, when Charles and Ray Eames still maintained a company due to the high demand, which produced extremely successful moulded wood leg bracesfor the military. The Eames Arm and Side Chairs met the demand for Midcentury furniture, adaptable to be producible and affordable for the broader masses. The Eames multi-purpose chairs soon became an integral part of universities, restaurants, schools, offices and airports and eventually became one of the popular design classics in the late 1990s after a temporary halt in production.