In the living room at La Tzoumaz Lodge, two Lounge Chairs and their ottoman make an intimate corner, almost among the larches and birches. Designed by design's legendary couple, Charles and Ray Eames, these chairs turn seventy this year. This is their story, and the reason we wanted them at the chalet.
Charles and Ray Eames
Charles, an architect, and Ray, a painter, met at the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit. In 1940, Charles and Eero Saarinen won MoMA's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition with moulded plywood seats. During the war, the couple made leg splints for the US Navy and perfected the techniques they would later use for their furniture. Collaborations with Eero Saarinen and Herman Miller, Case Study House No. 8, the steel-and-glass home in Pacific Palisades they moved into on Christmas Eve 1949, storage units, plastic chairs with interchangeable bases or in steel wire, swivelling aluminium and leather chairs, some fifty films: their creativity seems boundless.
1956: the Lounge Chair is born
The Lounge Chair crowned sixteen years of work on moulded plywood. A lounge chair was already among the prototypes for MoMA's 1940 competition, and in 1946 the museum showed an all-plywood version that never went into production. It would take another ten years to get the shape right. Charles wanted the comfort of an English club chair without its bulk: the warmth of an old baseball glove, softened by use.
The design rests on three moulded plywood shells with a rosewood veneer, for the seat, back and headrest, fitted with buttoned leather cushions filled with foam, down and feathers. They sit on a five-pronged swivel base of cast aluminium, joined by rubber shock mounts that give the chair its gentle give. A matching ottoman completes the set.
The first prototype was a gift, in 1956, to their friend the film director Billy Wilder. A first run of fifty chairs was assembled by hand for the Herman Miller showroom, and the chair was launched on American television on Arlene Francis's Home show, with a short film by Charles on how it was made, set to music by Elmer Bernstein. It found its public at once: by 1975, Herman Miller had already sold one hundred thousand. Produced by Herman Miller in the United States and today by Vitra, a Swiss company, in Europe, the Lounge Chair is part of MoMA's permanent collection.
At the chalet
The Eameses wanted objects that were comfortable, beautiful and made to last. That is also what guided us throughout the fitting-out of La Tzoumaz Lodge. On a more personal note, two Eames chairs once looked out over the Seine at my parents-in-law's. Credit where credit is due: they are the ones who introduced me to the utter comfort of sitting in these chairs.
Whether for reading the morning papers or gazing at the peaks, sipping a tea or an Armagnac, putting the world to rights or simply taking a short nap after a day on the 4 Vallées slopes, the Eames chairs never let you down.
Find it in the chalet library: Gloria Koenig, Eames, Taschen.
