Time magazine called the LCW “the chair of the century”. It was first made available to the public in 1946, and we still make it in the same configuration today. In 1945, as the sense grew that the war was coming to a close, the Eames Office, now two years old and some 15 people strong, turned its attention away from wartime work and back to furniture. 

By 1945, when the Eames Molded Plywood Group was introduced to potential distribution partners, and 1946, when the Eames LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) was introduced to the public in a rather grand way, at the Museum of Modern Art, Charles and Ray had many years of plywood experience under their belt. Charles had used plywood for the Kleinhans Auditorium, the Crow Island School chairs, and the Organic Design competition chairs. Charles and Ray co-designed the Eames Leg Splint, molded of plywood with the compound curves characteristic of what they then called the “Eames process,” which was patented.

The Eames LCW is lightweight, and the parts were susceptible to mass production, using the “Eames process,” by which the actual sheets of plywood were formed at the same time as the compound curves were imposed. Using a homemade device, Charles and Ray called the “Kazaam” machine (referencing stage magicians, who put one object in a box and pull out a distinctly different one, Ala Kazaam!), perfected molding in their own residential apartment on Strathmore Avenue in West Los Angeles. The first plywood pieces got their shape from balloons, which Charles and Ray filled with air supplied by a bicycle pump! "

Manufacturer: Ray and Charles Eames for Herman Miller