CHARLES EAMES (1907-1978) and his wife, RAY (1912-1988) designed some of the most important examples of 20th century furniture.
It all started in 1941, when the couple rented a modest Los Angeles apartment and used the spare bedroom as a workshop. No sooner had Charles and Ray moved in than they kitted out the room with a home-made moulding machine into which they fed the woods and glues that Charles would sneak home from his day job as a set architect for MGM. Their nights were spent conducting plywood experiments. They produced sculptures, chairs, screens, tables and even toy animals in plywood.
In 1946, Herman Miller, the US furniture group, was persuaded to put some of these pieces into production by George Nelson, its head of design. All the Eames' plywood combined an elegant organic aesthetic with a love of materials and technical ingenuity. Charles and Ray sustained this spirit in the way they dressed: he in open-necked shirts and loose pants, she in a bohemian version of a conventionally feminine wardrobe of short-sleeved blouses and full skirts.
The lounge chair was born in 1956. It was made as a gift for their friend Billy Wilder, the director of "Some Like It Hot" and "Sunset Blvd."
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