A special edition of Charles and Ray Eames' innovative 1950 Shell chair gets a reissue - complete with its original design. The chair was a collaboration between Charles and Ray Eames and legendary 'New Yorker' illustrator Saul Steinberg.
Launched in 1950, the shell chairs designed by Charles and Ray Eames were the first mass-produced furniture item in which the seat and back were formed from a single unified piece of plastic. That same year, the design couple invited their friend, Saul Steinberg, the illustrator best known for his cartoon-like musings in “The New Yorker” — he described himself as “a writer who draws” — to visit them. . While on the West Coast with his wife, Hedda Sterne, Steinberg made the fateful trip to the Eames' office in Venice, California.
Together, the three eccentrics brimmed with imagination, creating a variety of unique art objects. “The interconnectedness of Steinberg's ideas and how they overlapped with my grandparents' designs is incredible,” said Llisa Demetrios, the Eames' youngest granddaughter and chief curator of the Eames Institute, which oversees the art and design legacy of Steinberg. family. “I think this collaboration is an example of how they liked to create – always open to another creative iteration, going beyond the expected.”
“Steinberg was always attentive to the changing cultural landscape of America,” said scholar Francesca Pellicciari, co-curator of “Saul Steinberg: Milan, New York” at the 2021 Triennale di Milano. “[He] seemed to delight in the growing gulf between popular tastes and the cutting edge of modernist art and design. “In fact, in the 1950s, Steinberg had distinguished himself as a painter and muralist, in addition to his ironic cartoons for “The New Yorker”. In 1946, he was included in the group exhibition “Fourteen Americans” at MoMA, exhibiting alongside Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi and Robert Motherwell.
At some point during his creative spree with the Eameses, Steinberg applied his wit and humor to two of those shell chairs. In one, he drew the rough outline of a sleeping cat and, in the other, a naked woman. The Eameses held those chairs, which they correctly understood to be more than the byproduct of two couples having fun. Now, more than 70 years later, the “Eames Institute” has digitized and faithfully reproduced the cat chair by Vitra and furniture company Herman Miller, right down to the hand-drawn whiskers. The new model, in a limited edition of 500 units, is available for US$2,500.
Source: Artnet News