Plywood Group LCW

Overview

The LCW, short for Lounge Chair Wood, is the low easy chair that Charles and Ray Eames developed out of their early work with three-dimensionally moulded plywood. Vitra files it in the Plywood Group and dates it 1945/1946.

Image source: Vitra — Plywood Group LCW · © Vitra and the respective rights holders. Quoted to accompany INTEBEE's independent design commentary and research. · View official product page ↗ · Image use & copyright policy

Construction

Seat and back are shells of moulded plywood with a face veneer and a lacquered surface, made in ash or walnut. The legs are cut from the same veneered plywood. Shock mounts, which are rubber and metal connectors bonded together, hold the seat and the backrest to that base. The leather and calfskin editions add a thin layer of foam under the cover.

Specifications

The LCW measures 560 mm across, 610 mm deep and 680 mm high, with the seat at 300 mm. Three lacquered finishes are listed, numbered 64 (natural ash), 45 (walnut, black pigmented) and 68 (black ash). The LCW Leather is covered in 66 nero, and the LCW Calf's Skin comes in black/white or brown/white.

The Kazam! machine

Vitra's magazine traces the Plywood Group to 1941, when Charles and Ray Eames turned their Los Angeles apartment into a workshop. Their home-made Kazam! machine pressed a glued sandwich of veneer layers against a curved plaster mould with a membrane inflated by a bicycle pump, and in the spring of 1945 it produced the LCW, which the article calls the beginning of the Plywood Group.

How the LCW came about

Wikipedia traces the LCW to the plywood-moulding know-how the Eameses built up before and during the Second World War. In 1940 Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen won the Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition with furniture whose seat and back formed a single shell; the plywood tended to crack in tight curves, so those entries were upholstered. After a long series of trials the Eameses split seat and backrest into two parts, joined them with a plywood spine and carried them on plywood legs, and left every connection in view. The rubber shock mounts let the backrest move with the person sitting in it.

Production

Evans Molded Plywood of Venice Beach, California, made the chair for Herman Miller from 1946 to 1947, according to Wikipedia, and Herman Miller later moved production to Michigan. For Europe, Wikipedia says, Vitra became the manufacturer of Eames furniture.