ES108 Eames Sofa

Development of the Eames Sofa began with Vitra during the last years of Charles’s life, but it was not put into production until six years after his passing. Contact sheets inscribed “Prototype Sofa Sent to Willie (sic) Fehlbaum Basel June 1978” give a good indication of the status of the design at the end of Charles’s life. One could easily describe the prototype in question as a “Soft Pad Sofa Compact” as it marries the soft leather upholstered pads associated with the former to an actual frame of the latter. The eventual design would instead utilize cast aluminum legs modeled on those of the other Eames sofa, known only as model 3473, and arms that relate to those castings. The final design’s wood panels and frame further impart a sense of stately luxury, and most closely resemble architectural elements of the Eameses’ design for the lobby of the Time & Life Building. It perhaps is appropriate that the final design in the Eameses’ extensive canon draws from a myriad of previous efforts, while also feeling somewhat unresolved—if only because they themselves were no longer there to keep iterating on it.