We all are Mid-Century fans, isn’t it?
There’s a personal component in our personal mid century craziness because we like the design, but the market stimulates it as well!
I just read, but maybe is an old news for some of you, that Herman Miller introduced new colors for the addictive Eames molded plastic chairs range.
A short history of the molded plastic chair.
The molded plastic chair has been designed by Charles and Ray Eames after the WWII for Herman Miller.
As I showed you in How the Wars Influenced the Mid-Century design, in fact, the postwar designers and manufacturers borrowed a lot from the war industry.
The Eameses worked a lot to adapt the new technologies and materials available in those years to obtain a product that was at the same time cheap, mass produceable and organic.
The result was the molded fiberglass plastic chair.
Herman Miller introduced many different base for it, both for the ‘normal’ and the Armchair.
But within all, the one who makes all the Mid-Century fans crazy is the ‘Eiffel’ base that made the seat even more original and desirable. It is impossible to read a magazine without seeing at least once the Eiffel Shell chair 🙂 LOVE.
The Shell was the first one-piece plastic chair mass-produced ever, but was also the expression of the Eameses peculiar philosophy: it didn’t have any upholstery or cover because the plastic had to have the lead role!
The video below shows all the production process of the Shell chair in a original film directed by Charles Eameses for Herman Miller in the 70s; yes directed by him! This is actually another interesting thing I’ll be writing about very soon 😉
The new colors and the old catalogues
To go back, today the molded chairs are produced in polypropylene. The new material is 100% recyclable but I also read in many blogs that it gives at the chair a ‘cheap’ effect; specially to the Armchair. I can’t say if is true or not…I’m not lucky enough to have one of them.
Anyway, the new colors are the Aqua sky, java, wafer, greystone, sparrow and the prices are between $300 and $500; it depends from the model and the base you choose.
If you are wondering from where I took the pic above, you probably want also to have a look to the original Herman Miller catalogues.
Have a look to my previous post A Close Look to One of The Greatest Designers Ever:Charles Eames about this 😉
Personally I would love to find a fiberglass yellow-creamy one 🙂
Which one would you like more?