New York, 1947. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announces the International Affordable Furniture Competition. The contest, which had held a previous edition in 1941, had been interrupted in the middle years of the decade by World War II. After that forced hiatus, he returned with a thirst for color and optimism, ready to furnish with beauty, hedonism and carelessness the domestic aesthetics of the American Way of Life. That year, the Californian couple formed by Charles and Ray Eames won the second prize in the Seats category with their, now iconic, Shell Chair. 75 years later, Vitra has produced a limited edition of 500 numbered units of the Shell armchair to celebrate the before and after of that design milestone and, also, to its creators, to whom it dedicates an exhibition in Germany from June 14.
75 years ago there was a detail that radically changed the orientation of the MoMA contest with respect to how it had been conceived in the early forties. To the title of the 1947 call was added the term low cost (low cost or affordable, in Spanish). Those two words infused the event with a revolutionary and conscious character, highlighting MoMA's interest in promoting from industrial design a comfortable and accommodating lifestyle, but in economic harmony with the rigor of a post-war period.
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Charles and Ray Eames with Shell.Eames Office Chairs, LLC 2023
The Shell Chair by Charles and Ray Eames was the first chair in history manufactured industrially in series, marketed by Vitra from the fifties to the present. Of apparent simplicity, the piece boasts a complex geometry of curved lines and continuous strokes that merge the seat and backrest in a plastic structure in one piece. "The organic profile of the housing offers a feeling of floating lightness never felt until that moment," they say in Vitra. This shell, the heart of the work, was then arranged on various bases: metal or wooden legs, high bench feet, rocking chair rockers, tripods with wheels... The imagination, the rejection of stylistic excess, the jovial spirit and a deep reflection on society and the environment democratized the world of furniture.
Of necessity, virtue
Eames Shell armchair with cat drawing by Saul Steinberg at the Eames House in Pacific Palisades (California). FLORIAN BOEHM (Vitra, Florian Böhm, Eames House, Eames Foundation)
With the Shell series, the Eames masterfully captured the true essence of good design: solving real-life problems. If before the Great War they had dared with complex prototypes of laminated birch, the commitment to make the design available to the majority stirred their minds, leading them to change the noble wood for a polyester resin reinforced with fiberglass, amazingly versatile and much cheaper. As for the shape, it was meticulously premeditated and conceived so that the seat could be manufactured, stacked and moved in series, reducing production costs to the maximum. Talent, purpose, commitment, technical rigor, harmony and high doses of imagination came up with the optimal solution to seduce that middle-class consumer eager to release interior design and, with it, shake off the memory of everything that sounded like penury. Nothing to do with the emptiness of concept of many of the objects that today pretend to be considered "design".
The chair as a canvas
Production of the original armchair Eames Shell.Eames Office, LLC 2023
The MoMA award was just the beginning: the funniest chapter in the history of Charles and Ray Eames' fiberglass seat was yet to be written. Or rather... to be drawn. On a visit to the Eames' Los Angeles office, Romanian-born Jewish artist Saul Steinberg — a cartoonist for The New Yorker and a close friend of the couple — scribbled on the studio's furniture, floor and walls. Spontaneous strokes flowed throughout the space. One of the figures that emerged from that improvised happening was a cat curled up in a Shell armchair. With his eyes closed, the happy grimace of the seems to express his desire to want to remain attached to that cozy armchair forever.
Saul Steinberg with his cat 'Papoose' in his studio in Amagansett, Long Island, in 1974.The Saul Steinberg Foundation Rigts Society (ARS)
"There is something extremely intelligent and philosophical about a cat," Steinberg wrote in 1967 about felines, one of the illustrator's favorite and most recurrent motifs. Through his fine mastery of parody, Steinberg's drawings fed the critical spirit from one of the most popular magazines of the time. With that spontaneous foray into 3D – a childish scribble curled up in a MoMA piece – the antisocial crawler who steals our seat consecrated its author as a master of humor, tenderness and nonconformity.
Half furniture, half vignette
Eames Shell armchair with cat by Saul Steinberg at the Eames House in Pacific Palisades (California). FLORIAN BOEHM (Vitra, Florian Böhm (Studio AKFB), Eames House, Eames Foundation, 2023)
From that artistic experiment, two original pieces are still preserved in the Eamesoffice: the cat and a female nude. To mark the 75th anniversary of MoMa's International Affordable Furniture Competition, Vitra has produced a limited edition of 500 numbered units of the Eames' Shell armchair with Steinberg's cat. The replicas have been hand-painted one by one from an exact template of the original.
In addition, on June 14, coinciding with the Art Basel fair, the designer furniture manufacturer will present the Eames & Steinberg exhibition at its campus in Weil am Rhein (Germany). The exhibition reflects on the way in which these creators broke the barriers between industrial design and graphic design through a unique reciprocity between both languages never before explored.
Production of the limited edition Eames Shell armchair with cat by Saul Steinberg.Marek iwicki (Vitra)
The Eames chair is transcendent because it refers to the first purpose of democratizing design, something that in a climate of crisis comparable to the one that surrounds us today is vital and commendable. Steinberg's cat crouching there is transcendent for its sense of humor, for its cynicism, for its free and subversive spirit. Chair and cat eloquently express the commitment of their creators to their time. They are two everyday inhabitants of homes and together they make inimitable this work – half furniture, half vignette – that furnishes our houses and also our minds. Design and illustration: what much needed trades.
