With the application of new materials and the concept of interchangeable bases
Eames achieved his goal of “simple yet comfortable” with “an inherent rightness” for the DSW (Dining Height Side Chair Wood Base).

Like Marcel Breuer’s work with tubular steel a few decades earlier Eames’s experiments with a single seat shell (first wood then metal and fibreglass) produced chairs in which the appearance is the result of how they were made.

Plastics have been used since the nineteenth century though its commercial application to chairs is a 20th Century development attributed mainly to the Eames’s. Glass-fibre reinforced polyester (GRP) was developed in the US by Owens Corning in the 1930’s for use for the military and was used amongst other things for radar domes. In the late 40’s the Eames’s after unsuccessful experiments with sheet metal looked to fibre-glass as an option for their seat shell concept. They approached John Wills who produced fibreglass hulls for boats and parts for cars to work on prototypes for the next stage of development of the shells. These prototypes were a success.

The Eames’s together with Zenith Plastics a specialist in GRP along with the Herman Miller Furniture Company developed new fabrication methods to execute the one piece shell concept for MOMA’s International Competition for Low Cost Furniture Design in 1948. Production models of the shell arm chair (DAX) were introduced early 1950 with the side chair presented here following shortly after.

M//M

Moulded Glass-Fibre Maple Steel Rubber

80 x 65 x 60 cm

SOLD