PAW Swivel chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1950 for Zenith Plastics.
The Eames’ first used fibreglass cloth and plastic resin material as screens in their Case Study House of 1949.
They worked with Zenith Plastics, a specialist firm, to develop a plastic version of a design for a stamped metal chair. The first models were exhibited in the 1950 MOMA exhibition ‘Low Cost Furniture Design’.
The tooling and engineering costs were extremely high, and chairs were hand-made. The early examples were reinforced with an embedded rope edge to the seat. Through conviction and further development of the production processes allowed for a highly versatile, low cost armchair shell.
This new design offered high comfort levels and durability without the need for upholstery. The use of rubber mounts beneath the chairs provided a discrete fixing and flexibility for a host of base options to be combined with the fibreglass seat.
PAW was more expensive base option and available with a fixed or swivel version. The design echoes the DAR with an ‘Eiffel’ type configuration, but the marriage of timber dowels within the steel structure softens the overall aesthetic and creates a truly unique marriage of materials.
The chair offered is an early example with the rope edge, large shock mounts and translucent fibreglass was originally purchased in USA.
Dimensions:
60w x 60d x 45/78cmh
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