The Book for the Chair | The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design

Great Coffee Table book for a great American Icon | The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design | Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, ...

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	• The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design Martin Eidelberg, Thomas Hine, ... Merrell, 2006 - 189 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Lounging about

At last a book about THAT chair. Thomas Hine, one of the contributors to this interesting book, writes a chapter about the way the chair kept popping up in all the right media and this probably helped it along to its iconic status. I was aware of the chair many years ago and kept seeing it in interior design photos, adverts, and anywhere that visually needed to project an upmarket ambience. Strangely I never saw anyone sitting in these chairs and I was surprised to find, when I bought one, that the back does not support one's head. A 1956 photo used in a Herman Miller ad shows a stockbroker friend of Charles Eames clearly with his head on the back, he was either a short guy or had moved well forward in the chair.

The book is a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the chair by five contributors with over two hundred illustrations. I thought Pat Kirkham's chapter on the chair's development the most interesting. There is a 1946 photo of a chair that is clearly a prototype for the final 1956 version. Another photo, from 1950 shows Billy Wilder sitting in this '46 version. Although Charles Eames designed the chair there was a huge technical input from Don Albinson who worked in the Eames Office.

The book is a handsome production, well thought out editorially and nicely designed and printed though there is a bit of unnecessary design whimsy with the chapter titled 'The Lounge Chair: idea to icon'. It has seventy-seven pages of photos and graphics with no page numbers, the captions are on three following pages where the illustrations are repeated as thumbnails with the relevant text, in fact the seventy-seven pages had enough space for these captions. Also I would have liked to have seen a technical drawing of the chair and ottoman with dimensions.

Despite a rather high list price I thought this book was a super reminder of a brilliant example of product design. The chair's status is surely growing because by 2004 over one hundred thousand had been sold and that most likely includes mine.

***FOR AN LOOK INSIDE click 'customer images' under the cover.

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The Book for the Chair

A great resource for anyone that has one of these iconic chairs or is interested in its history.

Great Coffee Table book for a great American Icon

Recently we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Eames Lounge Chair and what better tribute to that milestone than this commemorative book. I have it and I love t. There is also a poster of the cover that you must get too.

Hats off to Herman Milller for keeping the Eames style relevant and as fresh as ever!

The epitome of Modernist style and luxurious comfort, Charles and Ray Eames's leather-upholstered rosewood-veneered chair and matching ottoman, launched in 1956, is a design classic of the twentieth century. This major publication, celebrating the Lounge Chair's fiftieth anniversary, explores the design in detail and places it in its cultural, historical and social contexts, offering fresh insights into this revered icon and its equally revered creators

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