The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is an epochal piece of furniture. From the minute it was introduced to the public, it has been embraced with popular support and critical adulation. There is perhaps no other chair on the market that has had such an enormously positive response for such a long time. The common critical opinion, which was that this was an epochal, possibly century-defining chair, has gone on unchecked for more than a half century. It is only natural, therefore, that this chair has found a hallowed place in the design collections of many of the finest art and design museums in the world.
Most recently, the chair was the featured product in an exhibition staged at New York’s Museum of Art & Design (MAD), which was held to commemorate the chair’s 50th anniversary. The exhibition, titled “The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design” featured extensive drawings, original artwork and advertisements, and a retrospective on the special place the chair holds in the history of furniture design in this country. According to Holly Hotchner, distinguished director of the Museum of Art & Design, “The incomparable Eames Lounge Chair set a high standard for design innovation and elegance in affluent, postwar America … half a century later, this iconic work continues to influence the international design world.”
The exhibit staged there was a travelling exhibit, making stops all over the country. A companion piece to the exhibit, the 190-page full-color illustrated book, features additional research and scholarly insight when it comes to the chair, including from furniture critic and design historian Martin Eidelberg, whose piece on the history of the chair enveloped in the history of the modern furniture movement is essential reading. Also, Pat Kirkham, a design professor at New York’s Bard Graduate Center, takes a more personal survey of the chair, locating it in the lives and intermingled careers of Charles and Ray Eames.
The Eames Lounge Chair is featured at both the Art Institute of
Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York .
The chair is not only the province of traveling exhibitions and books, however. It is also on display in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Modern Art in New York. These two august institutions, a pair of the great American museums, have seen fit to safeguard the legacy of the Eames’ work, and, in particular, the lounge chair, from the ravages of time and lost memory. History has resolved neither to forget nor undersell this iconic piece.
No chair, nor really any piece of furniture, in modern American history has had quite this level of devotion and attention. The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is a very special contribution to modern design, to the modern American home, and to the long and distinguished legacy of furniture and industrial design in this country and others. Here at Smart Furniture, you have a chance to own in your own home a product sought after by the best museums in America for their collections. Quite a chance to get great design, and buy the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman today.
