This recurring column looks at great moments in sit down design. The furniture in your crib is as important as the art on your walls and the clothes on your body, so hopefully this series helps you recognize awesomeness when you see it, whether that's while shopping at Design Within Reach or talking to your latest lady friend's gallery owner.
No creative office or tumblr dream apartment is complete without the Eames Lounge and Ottoman, a set designed by Charles and Ray Eames and manufactured by the O.G. furniture king Herman Miller. The design team got its start working for the American military, experimenting with molded plywood and designing a modular wooden splint for mass production. Following World War II, the two took their knowledge of plywood modling to furniture design and released an impressive run of groundbreaking plywood-shell chairs. The Lounge and Ottoman are arguably the pinnacle of this run, a chair that from its inception had star power. The Eames first designed the chair as a gift for their friend, Hollywood film director Billy Wilder. Wilder was known to rig up makeshift lounge chair for himself while he was on set to take naps between takes and re-energize, and this chair made doing that a bit more professional looking. When this chair debuted, modernism was about cold hard lines, and the Lounge and Ottoman brought warmth and comfort to modernist cool. See any similarities to a fancy leather mens club sofa? Charles Eames wanted it to feel like a giant catcher's mitt, cushioning the body all the way through. Yeah. Good things.
