- Designer
- Charles Eames
United States, active United States, California, Venice, 1907-1978 - Designer
- Ray Eames
United States, active United States, California, Venice, 1912-1988 - Design Firm
- Eames Office
United States, California, Venice, 1941-1988 - Title
- DCW (Dining Chair Wood)
- Date Made
- 1946-1949
- Medium
- Rosewood, rubber, steel
- Dimensions
- 29 x 19 1/2 x 22 in. (73.66 x 49.53 x 55.88 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2008.290.3
- Collecting Area
- Decorative Arts and Design
- Curatorial Notes
This rosewood DCW (Dining Chair Wood) is a rare iteration of a familiar form. The molded plywood chair was one of the first consumer products born out of technologies developed during World War II. Using techniques that they had devised for molding plywood splints for the U.S. Navy, Charles and Ray Eames created a technologically advanced, affordable line of chairs and tables. Initially, the furniture was made at the Venice, California−based Molded Plywood Division of the Evans Products Company. This chair, bearing a sticker with both the Evans and Herman Miller logos, was made during the period 1946−49, when Evans produced the furniture and Herman Miller, based in Zeeland, Michigan, handled marketing and distribution. In 1949, Herman Miller assumed all responsibility for the Eames line. The Eameses sought to make well-designed furniture for middle-class clients, so most DCWs were made of either ash or birch veneer, relatively inexpensive woods. This DCW is distinguished by its more lavish material, an exotic rosewood veneer.
Bobbye Tigerman
2008
- Selected Bibliography
- Kaplan, Wendy, ed. California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.
- Kaplan, Wendy, ed. Living in a Modern Way: California Design, 1930-1965. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013.
- Tigerman, Bobbye, and Monica Obniski. Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890-1980. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2020.
- Selected Exhibition History
- California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way". October 1, 2011 - June 3, 2012
- California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way". March 20, 2013 - June 3, 2013
- California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way". July 6, 2013 - September 29, 2013
- California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way". November 2, 2013 - February 9, 2014
- California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way". March 29, 2014 - July 6, 2014
- Copyright
- © Eames Office LLC
