Clean, spare and elegant, the Eames molded plywood chair for Herman Miller established the look for the late 20th century and is a Business and Design Classic.

Throughout their prodigious careers, Charles and Ray Eames experimented with new materials to create affordable quality furnishings that could be mass produced. With their introduction of the molded plywood chair, issued by Herman Miller in 1946, they proved that ergonomic comfort could be expressed in the most elegant, simple way. Charles Eames' interest in molded plywood began even while a student at Cranbrook Academy of Art. He and Eero Saarinen collaborated on a molded plywood chair that won first place at a Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) competition in 1940. As innovative as it was, it did not address plywood's tendency to splinter when bent into acute angles.

Charles and Ray were still puzzling over this problem in the early 1940s, when a doctor told them that wounded GIs were being maimed when their metal leg splints cracked. That inspired them to make a cast of Charles' leg to mold a plywood splint, which they marketed to the U.S. Navy through their Plyformed Wood Company (sold in 1943 to Evans Products). The Eameses also helped the military develop molded plywood stretchers and airplane pilot seats, while continuing to experiment on chairs and toys.

At the war's end, they turned their research into actual products, which they unveiled at a MOMA exhibition in 1946. Among the pieces was a plywood chair using separate seat and back panels contoured to the shape of the human body. It caught the attention of Herman Miller's legendary design director, George Nelson, and the famous Eames furniture line was born.