Charles and Ray Eames
Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988) were an American husband-and-wife design partnership whose work at the Eames Office in Venice, California ran from the early 1940s to the late 1970s. Between them they produced furniture, films, exhibitions, toys and buildings. The furniture is what most people know, and it is the part that still sets the shape of a modern chair.
Charles was born in St. Louis and trained in architecture. Ray was born Bernice Alexandra Kaiser in Sacramento and trained as a painter under Hans Hofmann. They married in 1941 and worked as equals from that point on, though for decades the credit went to Charles alone. That has since been corrected in most serious accounts of the work.
The plywood years, 1941–1946
The Eameses spent the early 1940s trying to bend plywood in two directions at once — a compound curve — without splitting it. The first commercial result of that research was not a chair at all. It was a moulded plywood leg splint made for the US Navy during the Second World War, produced in the tens of thousands.
The furniture followed in 1945 and 1946. The LCW — Lounge Chair Wood — put a separately moulded seat and back panel on a plywood frame, joined by rubber shock mounts rather than rigid fixings. Those shock mounts are the reason a chair with no cushion is comfortable: the back flexes slightly as you shift your weight. In 1999 Time named it the best design of the twentieth century.
We sell four wood finishes of an LCW-style chair, all at the same price, under LCW plywood chairs.
The moulded shell chairs, 1948–1950
In 1948 the Museum of Modern Art ran an International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design. The Eames entry was a single moulded shell that could be dropped onto any number of different bases — wood dowel legs, wire rod, a rocker, a swivel column. One shell, many chairs.
That modularity is where the model codes come from, and once you know the system the names stop looking like part numbers:
| Code | Reads as | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| LCW | Lounge height, Chair, Wood | The 1945 moulded plywood occasional chair |
| DSW | Dining height, Side chair, Wood dowel base | Armless dining chair on splayed wooden legs |
| DAW | Dining height, Arm chair, Wood dowel base | The same shell with arms |
| RAR | Rocker, Arm chair, Rod base | Wire rod base on solid wood runners |
Our versions: DSW style and DAW style dining chairs, and RAR style rocking armchairs.
The Lounge Chair and Ottoman, 1956
Charles described the brief as wanting the chair to have “the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt”. It went on air in 1956 on the NBC programme Home, presented by Arlene Francis — a piece of furniture launched on daytime television, which tells you something about how confident they were in it.
Three moulded plywood shells, leather cushions, a five-star aluminium base under the chair and a four-star base under the ottoman. It is the piece most people mean when they say “Eames chair”, and it is still the most demanding one to place in a room, because it reclines and needs clearance behind it.
We sell it two ways: as a chair and ottoman set in twenty-six finish combinations, or as the chair on its own. Which one to buy is covered properly in our Eames style lounge chair buying guide.
The Aluminium Group and Soft Pad Group, 1958 and 1969
The Aluminium Group came out of a commission for indoor-outdoor furniture for a private house. Instead of a shell with a pad on it, the seat and back are a single panel of material suspended in tension between two side ribs of cast aluminium. It is the reason those chairs look thin from the side.
The Soft Pad Group of 1969 kept the frame and added separately cushioned leather panels — the version most people now buy for a desk.
- EA stands for Eames Aluminium. EA117 and EA119 ribbed chairs are the thin, architectural profile; EA217 and EA219 soft pad chairs are the cushioned ones.
- The lower number is a low back, the higher a high back. 117 low, 119 high; 217 medium, 219 high.
- The same frame in mesh gives our mesh office chairs.
- ES104 is the catalogue code for the Lobby Chair of 1960, designed for the lobby of the Time & Life Building in New York. Lower, wider and deeper than a desk chair — see our executive lobby chairs.
All of it sits under office chairs.
A note on what we sell
Habitat Furnishes is not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by the Eames Office, Herman Miller or Vitra. Everything on this site is described as “style” or “inspired by” because that is exactly what it is: our own reproduction of a design, made to the specification we publish on each product page. If you want an authorised original, buy it from a licensed manufacturer. If you want the shape and the proportions at a price that does not require a showroom markup, that is what we make.