The local story of the world-famous Eames Lounge chair
The designers who worked at Charles and Ray Eames’s office in Venice, California, called the place simply “901.” It was the address of the husband-and-wife team’s brick-walled workshop, 901 Washington Boulevard, the origin point for many groundbreaking furniture designs in the mid-20th century. However, the place where many of those concepts came to life—and still do—is 2,000 miles away, a small town in western Michigan called Zeeland.
Located 10 miles from the shores of Lake Michigan, Zeeland looks less like a modernist hot spot than a classic Main Street, USA, with two-story brick buildings lining quiet downtown streets. The town has roughly 5,500 residents, many of whom are involved with the furniture industry, whether they’re sourcing lumber, treating leather, or assembling and shipping finished pieces. Any design lover who hears the name Zeeland immediately thinks of Herman Miller, the furniture manufacturer founded nearly a century ago and made legendary largely through its collaborations with the Eameses, among a handful of other famous designers. From Herman Miller’s four West Michigan facilities come a celebrated array of midcentury modern designs—the wide, low-slung bent plywood chair; the colorful molded fiberglass seat; and, of course, the Eames lounge chair and ottoman.
While the curves of those pieces look organic, suited to fit the human form, the process of making them is industrial and became possible only through some of the technological advancements of the World War II era. In the early 1940s, the couple’s early experiments in pressing and bending plywood led them to create better field splints for injured soldiers. When the war ended, they took what they had learned back to chair design and began producing genuinely timeless American furniture. The lounge chair, in particular, with its generous proportions and softly gathered leather, has come to represent a declaration of comfort and permanence—a luxury item, yes, but also a symbol of commitment to what we now call “heirloom design,” pieces made to last for generations.