Five Sequential Icon Chairs of the 20th Century.

By Helmut BurriFurniture / Wood Workshop

ANU School of ArtBuilding 105

Australian National UniversityCanberra ACT 0200

Low Chair Wood (1945/46)By Charles and Ray Eames

Womb Chair (1946)By Earo Saarinen

Dining Armchair Rod (1948/50) By Charles and Ray Eames

Tulip Chair (1956) By Earo Saarinen

Panton Stacking Chair (1960)By Verner Panton

The technical genesis of the Low Chair Wood (LCW,) can be traced to the work started in 1936 when Charles Eames was offered a fellowship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Michigan. At Cranbrook, Charles came to associate with the architect Earo Saarinen and student Ray Kaiser (1). In 1939 Charles “joined forces” with Earo Saarinen to develop an armchair (A3501) for the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings. The design wins “first prize in two categories - seating for a living room and other furniture for a living room” (2). Their armchair, “was in many ways representative of the various ideas in circulation by the late 1930’s” (3).

Charles Eames would later acknowledge the influence of Altar Alto’s on two-dimensional molded plywood, along with the work of Breaur, Le Crosier, and Mies (4).

At the time conception Earo Saarinen and Charles Eames armchair was constrained by the limits of technology to produce a molded plywood seat in two directions in a cost effective manor. Further possibility of researching a cost effective production was forestalled when the Unites States entered World War Two in late 1941 (5). The Unites States war effort, however proved a fortuitous time for the soon to be Eames’s.

In 1941 Charles Eames married Ray Kaiser. And the newlyweds moved west to San Francisco (Contemporary Classics P.132), were they continued their experiments with molded plywood and their “Kazam! Machine” in their Richard Neutra apartment (6).

In 1941 an acquaintance from Charles home town of St Louis a Dr Wendell G. Scott “told them about problems the military was experiencing with a metal leg splints in the field” (7). At Scott’s suggestion the Eames adapted the plywood molding process to the production of splints and body litters “that would hold, immobilize, and support injured limbs safely” (8).

Working in their apartment the Eames turned their experiments towards plywood splints that could be mass-produced (9). By 1942, having consulted with the U.S. Navy, and having revised the design, the Eames in partnership with architects Gregory Ain, Griswald Raetze, and Margeret Harriesand formed the Plyform Wood Company, and rented a shop space at “10946 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles, … The group immediately began developing production tooling and researching for a glue that would set faster that the used in the splint prototypes. In November 1942, the navy placed its first order for 5,000 splints (10).

(1945/46) By Charles and Ray Eames

Low Chair Wood

In 1943 to meet the Navy's order for splints the Plyformed Wood Company moved to a larger premises at 555 Rose Avenue in Venice, California. The Venice local would in time become the legendary Eames design studio. By the war’s end the Plyform Wood Company had manufactured over 150,000 splints (11). As well as developing plywood litters, and arm splints, molded plywood pilot seat’s, as well as plywood aircraft parts for the military (12). “The emphasis on control and accuracy in the production of wartime products had a positive effect on the design and construction on latter plywood products. The military commissions also meant that priority material were made available to the group that otherwise would have been impossible for them to obtain” (13). A major development designed by Gregory Ain “was the introduction of ¼ -inch sheet metal mold (instead of wood-or plaster-ribbed molds) against which the wood was formed under pressure to achieve the compound curves. This innovation made it possible to form complex shapes” (14).

By the conclusion of WW2, the Eames had perfected the processes and material to bring to market an inexpensive, high quality chair, based on the materials and tolling developed during the war (15).

One of such first such pieces of furniture to be designed was the LCW. From a range of prototypes the LCW was selected to be the best candidate for mass production. LCW design allowed for the separation into distinct components, this meant that it would not be catastrophic if a “seat or back cracked or was broken” (16). The other major innovation was in gluing of the shock mounts (rubber washers with nuts embedded) to the plywood form using resorcinol phenolic adhesive, combined with electronic cycle welding they were able to induce heat between the shock mounts and the plywood. “The shock-mounted system afforded the chair-backs a measure of flexibility and resilience” (17).

“Although some exotic woods were tried, ash, rosewood, birch, and walnut emerged as the choices for the production models, each with a ‘baked-on’ synthetic oil finish” (Eames Design, P. 59). In December 1945 prototypes of LCW were shown at the Barclay Hotel press and trade preview, and in February 1946 at the Architectural League preview and at the Museum of Modern Art in March 1946. By the summer of 1946 the LCW entered mass production in Venice California (18), a mere seven years after the concept for the A3501 armchair, was initially developed.

In conclusion, what is striking about the development of LCW, is that it is a markedly contemporary chair, that shows little sign of being

dated even now as it approaches its 64th birthday. If commercial success of a design is ones measure for validity then the LCW, has proven itself to be an iconic piece of 20th century furniture, as it has remained in virtual constant production since its conception by Hermann Miller in American and Vitra in Europe (19).

The Womb Chair by Earo Saarinen was directed by two objectives. The first was to create a lounging chair that would take into account changes in contemporary sitting practices. A chair that would allow users to slump, and would allow shifting from one position to another in a comfortable manor (20). It is however regrettable that to this day the ubiquitous upholstered couch still reins supreme in the average Western home.

The second was to create a chair that was not only “unified as an object, but that it should coexist in unity with its user and its architectural setting” (21). I find this to be an admirable consideration. Furniture has its time and place, with one being inseparable to the other. I find it ridicules, that people will insist on locating a design aesthetic outside of the lifeworld into which it was formed. To in essence use, language of a bygone era, in the context of a living vernacular.

The Womb Chair made “very wide and very deep” (22). Which in Earo Saarinen’s own words was to “attempt to achieve psychological comfort by providing a great big cup-like shell into which you can curl up your legs (something that women seem especially to like to do” (23).

It was this psychological comfort to which the chair gained its name from, for when “sitting in

the chair, one comfortable and almost automatically assumed a fetal position” (24).

The Womb Char was formed by a molded plastic shell, that was upholstered with a doughnut shaped cushion of latex foam. “Two separate round latex foam cushions provided additional comfort for the shell. The entire chair was supported on its four legs and skeletal framework-both of bent rod steel (25).

The Womb Chair continued the evolution of new material and construction techniques in chair making. Combined with the Bauhaus inspired use of steel forms. The Womb Chair retains a dichotomy of material technology. The “nagging problem, however remained: the dissociation of the legs from the body of the chair. This issue plagued Saarinen and countless other furniture designers through the 1940’s. In Saarinen’s quest, his Womb Chair … was a compromise” (26).

It was however in commercial mass production that the Womb Chair, “shell could be easily molded and produced in large quantities at a low cost, key factors that had proved so elusive for the Organic Design chair. On the other hand, the science of plastic was still new and the inability to obtain a smooth surface meant that the chair had to be covered with foam rubber and upholstery (27).

(1946) By Earo Saarinen

Womb Chair

The origin of the Dining Armchair Rod (DAR), can be traced to the Saarinen’s Womb Chair, a copy of which could be found in the Eames Santa Monica home (28) and still further back to the prototype chairs explored by Charles Eames and Earo Saarinen for the Museum of Modern Art’s “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition in 1940 (29).

The DAR Chair had one distinct advantage over the Womb Chair. “By the time the DAR Char went into production, there was sufficient mastery of the material to produce it as a straightforward, completely exposed plastic shell free of the need for masking upholstery. Further, because the plastic could be colored, it came in a wide spectrum of cheerfully bright colors” (30).

“Charles Eames began working to produce a chair with a plastic shell seat” in 1948 (31). Initially Charles “perused the idea of a metal shell coated with neoprene, a synthetic rubber” (32). Eames won a second price in the Museum of Modern Art’s International Low-Cost Furniture Competition, with the metal shell iteration (33).

This metal shell chair was the forerunner to the DAR. By 1950 Charles “turned to polyester plastic reinforced with fiberglass for DAR” (34). However this was not without its challenges. Airborne glass particles were hazardous to factory workers. These particles also produced through the surfaces so that hand sanding was required. Solutions to these problems were found during the first year of production, resulting in [a] marketable product” (35).

However even with the advances in plastic technology at the same time their was noway to achieve a single-material design, the problem faced by chair designers since the 1930’s still could not be resolved. To this end, Charles “turned to the sort of wire metal bases that then represented the language of Modernism” (36).

Charles “chose a black painted steel frame terminating in four slightly canted legs. The Eames chair came with a variety of bases, including a trapezoidal arrangement (the so called Cat’s Cradle), one with canted legs, and an alternative in which the legs are supplemented with a wiry buttress (the Eiffel Tower base). All share the thin support, like the Breuer’s and Mies’s tubular-steel designs of the 1920’s” (37).

(1948/50) By Charles and Ray Eames

Dining Armchair Rod

Within these constraint’s Charles Eames came to regard “the seat element as a shell that should be contoured to the human body, and the leg structure as quite distinct base, to which the shell is attached” (38). This however presented Eames the opportunity, to “a whole set of interchangeable shell’s and support’s, producing a wide range of possible permutations” (39). The DAR’s “iconic status derives not only from the confidence of its design and its great commercial success, but also from the countless imitative plastic chairs in the next half century, each in its own way indebted to this now seemingly simple design” (40).

The Tulip Char developed by Earo Saarinen in 1956/57 formed part of large suit of furniture named the Pedestal Group (41). The objective of the Pedestal Group was in its creators own words to clean up the “slum of legs” … “modern chairs, with shell shapes and cages of stick’s below … become a sort of metal pluming” (42). This could be assumed to be a criticism of chairs the likes of the DAR by Charles and Ray Eames, with its wire metal base.

In the design of the Tulip Chair, Saarinen “made hundreds of sketches and studies on paper. Quarter-size models were then made to refine the form’s lines and proportions. Eventually, full size prototypes were constructed, which Saarinen tested on his family and friends in his own home in Bloomfield Hills” (43).

In another way the Tulip chair represents Earo Saarinen’s life long quest to “achieve an organic unity of design” (44). While the Tulip chair was “visually, unified” Saarinen was not able to achieve material unity. For at the time of conception a single molded pedestal chair was not with in the capacity of technology to deliver (45). “Instead, a cast-aluminum [coated in plastic] had to be integrated with the fiberglass seat-shell” (46). This was a disappointment to Saarinen since the chair could not be realized as a fully organic piece both in form and materials (47).

“Thought plastics exist today that would allow the chair to be constructed solely of one material, the finishes available are not of the quality required. Once this problem is solved, the chair can be manufactured as original designed. Even though Saarinen had to compromise in the organic nature of the material, his organic form met with immediate success” (48).

“To understand completely the success and impact of the Saarinen Pedestal Group, one has only to note the hundreds of copies it inspired. None of the copies, however, succeeded in matching the original group’s graceful unity, so carefully achieved by Earo Saarinen” (49).

(1956) By Earo Saarinen

Tulip Chair

The Panton Stacking Chair by Verner Panton was a chair that anticipated the “imaginative unorthodoxy of 60’s design” as well as the “availability of suitable technology” for production by several years (50).

“Panton’s chair bears a striking resemblance to Gerrit Tietveld’s Zig-zag, designed in 1934, in its distribution of load and stress through one single cohesive form” (51). In many ways the Panton Stacking Chair can be seen to be the culmination of form and material, evolving from the work done by Earo Saarinen’s, and Charles & Ray Eames.

“Few designers, however, have achieved such a logical shape, in term of comfort and strength of structure. Like all Panton’s designs it has, in spite of great fluidity of line, a tightness of form rarely found in any plastic or glass-fiber structure” (52).

“In this design, the freedom allowed by advances in plastic and moulded-forming technology has been exploited to maximum advantage, but with a fine degree of restraint” (53).

However the convergence between form and material technology was not seamless. While the Panton chair was conceived around 1960, as one continues plastic form it was not produced until 1967 (54).

Panton working with manufactures Herman Miller and Vitra “developed suitable production methods. Using cold-pressed, fiberglass-reinforced polyester, this fist run of chairs was made in a limited series of a about 150” (55). “In the 1970 the material was changed to ‘Luran-S’, an injection-moulded non-reinforced thermoplastic” (56).

(1961) by Verner Panton

Panton Stacking Chair

It was the objective of this essay, to review the evolution of 5 iconic chairs of the 20th century. To this objective I feel that I have learned and in most part illustrated this point. However I write from my own time and space, a time radically different from which these 5 iconic chairs were conceived.

Many of these iconic chairs have been copied since their conception, allowing them to become ever more defused amongst the social classes. However in being simple copies they have become but emaciated imitations. While giving a nod to the high brow original, the mass production of these chairs has in some part damaged their value, as objects of art, and fine furniture. Maybe it was inevitable the Pop bubble would burst.

The years spanning 1945 to 1960 were a time of prosperity and technological innovation, a world formed in an optimistic intoxication with man’s omnipotence over nature. An age markedly divergent from my own. An age defined by new materials that allowed designers to breakdown the constraints of their practice. Reflecting in part the evolving fluidly of modern social, economic and political structures. I however find myself, with a markedly different appreciation of these man made materials. Maybe it is that I grown to accustomed to them, that I no longer see them as a sign of man’s genius. Rather I view these materials in a far more problematic way, a product of a not fully understanding the implications of the “future now”. Maybe the world has become such a “synthetic” experience, that it makes me long for a revitalized romanticism with the natural world.

Maybe I become weary of mans omnipotence?

Yours truly

Helmut Burri

A 2009 Conclusion

Figure List

Fig. 1. Low Chair Wood by Charles and Ray Eames. http://www.moderndesigninterior.com/2009_03_01_archive.html (accessed 18 July 2009)Fig. 2. Womb Chair by Earo Saarinen. http://www.tibgraphics.com/samples/knollguide/product-womb.html (accessed 18 July 2009)Fig. 3. Dining Armchair Rod by Charles and Ray Eames. http://www.elkhome.co.uk/furniture/eamesdarfabric.htm (accessed 18 July 2009)Fig. 4. Tulip Chair by Earo Saarinen. http://festoon.ca/cgi-bin/online/storepro.php (accessed 18 July 2009)Fig. 5. Panton Stacking Chair by Verner Panton. http://www.conranusa.com/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=9083116&cid=Chairsstools&language=en-US (accessed 18 July 2009)

References1. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 1332. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 253. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 224. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 1335. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 226. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 133 + John Neuhart, Marilyn

Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 277. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 288. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 289. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 2810. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 2911. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 3312. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 42, 4313. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 4114. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 4115. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 5916. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 5917. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 5918. John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, (Harry N. Abrams,1989), 6119. Eames Lounge Chair. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 26 June 2009, http://www.nga.gov.au/ (accessed 05 July 2009)20. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15221. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15122. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15223. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 6524. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15225. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 152

26. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15227. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2428. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2429. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 7130. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2431. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2432. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 13833. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 13834. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2435. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 13836. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2437. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2538. Charlotte & Peter Fiell, The Modern Chair, (Benedikt Taschen, 1993), 11139. Charlotte & Peter Fiell, The Modern Chair, (Benedikt Taschen, 1993), 11140. Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, Pat Kirkham, David A. Hanks. C. Ford Peatross, The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, (Merrel Publishers, 2006), 2441. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15442. Charlotte & Peter Fiell, The Modern Chair, (Benedikt Taschen, 1993), 7543. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15444. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 7545. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 7546. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 7547. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15448. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15449. Charles D. Gandy, FASID, and Susan Zimmermann-Stidham, Contemporary Classics: Furniture Of The Masters, (Whitney Library of Design, 1990), 15450. Jennifer Blunden, Mod to Memphis: Design In Color 1960s-80s, (Powerhouse Publishing, 2002), 2151. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 13152. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 13153. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 13154. Jennifer Blunden, Mod to Memphis: Design In Color 1960s-80s, (Powerhouse Publishing, 2002), 2155. Jennifer Blunden, Mod to Memphis: Design In Color 1960s-80s, (Powerhouse Publishing, 2002), 2156. Clement Meadmore, Modern Chairs: Classics in Productions, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Limited, 1979), 89