"DCW" Side Chair

The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames, who collaborated in the design of hundreds of chairs, tables, and other pieces of furniture that combined mass production with a high sense of style and comfort, were among the most innovative American designers of the mid-twentieth century. Their most significant innovation was bending lengths of plywood in two planes. In contrast to Alvar Aalto's bending a flat sheet of plywood into one or more curves, the Eames were able to mold a single sheet of plywood in different directions, on different planes, at the same time. Other innovations include rubber shock mounts that give a chair its resiliency and newly developed glues that were used to attach the mounts to the back and seat so that the joints were not visible on the front surface.