Eames Lounge Chair

The Eames Lounge Chair is a low, reclining armchair built from three curved shells of moulded plywood, faced in wood veneer: one for the seat, one for the back, one for the headrest. Each holds a loose, buttoned leather cushion, and two padded armrests bridge seat and back. Cast aluminium spines join the shells, and the whole sits on a five-star swivel base, tilted back at a fixed angle. Its matching ottoman, sold with it, repeats the seat shell on a four-star base.

Charles and Ray Eames had spent the 1940s moulding plywood, first for Navy leg splints and then for chairs that Herman Miller of Zeeland, Michigan, sold from 1947. Most of their furniture aimed at low cost. This chair did not: it was their first for the top of the market, an updated English club chair which Charles wanted to have the receptive look of a well-used baseball mitt. After years of development it was shown on American national television in 1956 and went on sale through Herman Miller.

It was copied almost at once, and in 1962 the Eameses took out newspaper advertisements warning buyers against counterfeits. Herman Miller kept making it. In Europe, Vitra became the company's licensee in 1956 and, when the partnership ended in 1984, took over the Eames rights for Europe and the Middle East; a British licence went to Hille for ten years from 1957. Herman Miller gave a 1956 example to the Museum of Modern Art in 1960.

The changes have been in materials. The Brazilian rosewood veneer of the first chairs was dropped in the early 1990s for cherry, walnut and sustainably grown palisander, and the shells went from five plies to seven. Rubber spacers became plastic, armrest screws went from three to two, and a taller size was added in 2008. Shape, parts and posture are the 1956 chair's, and it remains in production in the United States and, under licence, in Europe.