1950s Rare Eames Zenith Side Chair for Herman Miller, USA

The scooped form of the revolutionary single-shell Eames molded fiberglass armchair — of which the Eames DAX chair is a variation — is ubiquitous in interior design today, found everywhere from restaurants to private homes to offices. In 1948, American designers Charles and Ray Eames (1907–78; 1912–88) conceptualized a lounge chair comprising two bonded fiberglass shells as well as a molded fiberglass armchair for the Museum of Modern Art’s International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design in New York City. The latter took second prize, and the Eames molded fiberglass armchair as we know it was born and brought to market two years later.

Charles and Ray met at Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, a breeding ground for some of the best-known mid-century modern designers in America. They collaborated on various projects before getting married in 1941. After establishing the Eames Office in Los Angeles, California, Charles and Ray would garner universal renown for their pioneering work in architecture, film, graphic design and furniture, producing timeless designs in their lounge chair, DCW chair and many more.

Partly an evolution of the molded plywood experimentation conducted by Charles and Eero Saarinen — with lesser heralded assistance from Ray — the Eames fiberglass armchair system featured a fiberglass-reinforced plastic seat positioned atop a variety of bases. DAX is an acronym for Dining (D) Armchair (A) on X-Base (X), referring to the height of the chair, the style of the chair’s body and the base of the chair. Today Eames DAX chairs, supported by a four-legged tubular steel base, are manufactured by Herman Miller and Vitra, both of which produce a fiberglass model as well as a polypropylene version.

Charles Eames and Ray Eames were the embodiment of the inventiveness, energy and optimism at the heart of mid-century modern American design, and have been recognized as the most influential designers of the 20th century. The Eameses were lovers of folk craft who had a genius for making highly original chairs, tables, case pieces and other furniture using traditional materials and forms.

As furniture designers, filmmakers, artists, textile and graphic designers and even toy and puzzle makers, the Eameses were a visionary and effective force for the notion that design should be an agent of positive change. They are the happy, ever-curious, ever-adventurous faces of modernism.

Charles Eames (1907–78) studied architecture and industrial design. Ray Eames (née Beatrice Alexandra Kaiser, 1912–88) was an artist, who studied under the Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann. They met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in suburban Detroit (the legendary institution where Charles also met his frequent collaborator Eero Saarinen and the artist and designer Harry Bertoia) and married the next year.

His technical skills and her artistic flair were wonderfully complementary. They moved to Los Angeles in 1941, where Charles worked on set design for MGM. In the evenings at their apartment, they experimented with molded plywood using a handmade heat-and-pressurization device they called the “Kazam!” machine. The next year, they won a contract from the U.S. Navy for lightweight plywood leg splints for wounded servicemen — vintage Eames splints are coveted collectibles today; more so those that Ray used to make sculptures.

The Navy contract allowed Charles to open a professional studio, and the attention-grabbing plywood furniture the firm produced prompted George Nelson, the director of design of the furniture-maker Herman Miller Inc., to enlist Charles and (by association, if not by contract) Ray in 1946. Some of the first Eames items to emerge from Herman Miller are now classics: the Eames chair, the LCW, or Lounge Chair Wood, and the DCM, or Dining Chair Metal, supported by tubular steel.

The Eameses eagerly embraced new technology and materials, and one of their peculiar talents was to imbue their supremely modern design with references to folk traditions. 

Their Wire chair group of the 1950s, for example, was inspired by basket weaving techniques. The populist notion of “good design for all” drove their molded fiberglass chair series that same decade, and also produced the organic-form, ever-delightful La Chaise. In 1956 the Eames lounge chair and ottoman appeared — the supremely comfortable plywood-base-and-leather-upholstery creation that will likely live in homes as long as there are people with good taste and sense.

Charles Eames once said, “The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.” For very good collectors and thoughtful interior designers, a piece of design by the Eameses, the closer produced to original conception the better, is almost de rigueur — for its beauty and comfort, and not least as a tribute to the creative legacy and enduring influence of Charles and Ray Eames.

The original Eames furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes chairs, tables, case pieces and other items.