1949 Charles & Ray Eames Molded Plastic Chairs
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GUEST:
I think the Eames chair's from, like, 1960s or so. My grandma gave them to me when she was getting older and moving into an assisted living home. They wouldn't fit in my car-- it's a small coupe-- and I was trying to throw them away, and my fiancé, luckily, said, "I'll take them apart and put them in my car," and so I brought them home and they've just kind of been sitting in my studio. (laughing) My grandma paid five dollars for them.
APPRAISER:
That's great. And your grandma's the original owner?
GUEST:
Yes-- well, she... No, she bought them from the Knights of Columbus. Which, they had-- they were getting rid of them all.
APPRAISER:
Any sense of the time when that happened?
GUEST:
Uh, I think she said in the '60s. You know, I've-- they've been around my whole life. I'm 42, she's 95, so... And I remember these chairs at her house.
APPRAISER:
So they are by Charles and Ray Eames. They're a little earlier than you think, they're 1949.
GUEST:
Oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
So the design came about in 1947. It was a MoMA design competition. It was about good quality, modern design, and low expense. So, cheap furniture for the masses but great quality. What makes these chairs special is that they really are from 1949. Really the earliest iteration of this chair. Some of the features that show us that the chair is an early version-- the first generation, really...
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
...start at the bottom. When we look at the underside of the chair, we see the early label. This was a Herman Miller-Zenith Plastics collaboration in 1949. What was great about this chair and why it became an award-winning design was the modularity. These pucks here, that we refer to as shock mounts, would allow the base to be taken off and interchanged with a host of bases. This chair is called the D.A.X. chair. Other features of the earliest chair are the rope edge embedded in the plastic-reinforced fiberglass. Another feature of the chair that changed almost immediately was the colors. Only the first generation or so had this translucent quality, and I'd like to show you what I mean.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
I'm taking out a flashlight here; if we had a sunny day, you'd be able to see this without a flashlight. But you'll see here a little bit of transparency.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
In the grain. And almost immediately, that was changed in the latter generations, because they went to darker colors. This color was called parchment. In 1949, no one had ever made a chair of fiberglass, so this was really innovative. Many of the chairs that we see today, they have condition issues.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
They have what they call bleed-through. So where that shock mount is glued to the bottom, the resin interacts with the plastic and it stains it.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
So these chairs are actually in really great shape. Now, I did notice that of the two chairs, this one here has a crack. That affects how collectors appreciate the chair. However, you should be pleased that you didn't put them to the trash.
GUEST:
(chuckles)
APPRAISER:
Do you have any sense of the value?
GUEST:
Uh, you know, I looked... I didn't know how, I thought they were, you know, $500 to $1,000. You know, something in that range, that's when I thought I should probably keep them, at that point, so...
APPRAISER:
Uh, you're pretty close.
GUEST:
Okay. They're a little bit more.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Even though there's a crack there. Had they been in perfect shape, the auction value would have been about $2,000.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
Now, due to the crack here...
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
We're closer to about $1,500 for the pair.
GUEST:
Wow, cool-- not bad for five bucks.
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