Plywood Elephant natural Miniature - / Eames (1945) by Vitra Natural wood

Located in Weil am Rhein in Germany (near the Swiss border), the Vitra Design Museum is a privately funded museum that showcases the unique design collection of the Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra. The Vitra Design Museum collection is one of the most important furniture design collections in the world. It contains around 7,000 pieces of furniture, more than a thousand lighting pieces, numerous archives and the inherited series of famous designers such as Charles & Ray Eames, Verner Panton and Alexander Girard. The Vitra Design Museum's collection of miniatures, which started more than 20 years ago, is an illustration of the milestones in the history of design. This collection encompasses the entire history of industrial furniture from the 1800s to present day, creating a pathway through time leading to the creation of modern seating, from historicism and Art Nouveau to Bauhaus and New Objectivity, Radical Design and Postmodernism to present day. A magnificent collection of emblematic works is presented to you. These chairs that have taken their place in history all carry the memories of their times: Materials, shapes, colours. They reveal the often forgotten dreams of their time, the (sometimes utopian) aspirations of their designers, but above all to their vision of the world. The chairs are reproduced on a one-sixth scale and faithfully replicate the original historical model down to the smallest details in the design, material and colour shade. This precise detail is also applied to the wood grain, the reproduction of the screws and the meticulous methods of handcrafting. These miniatures are not only valuable collector's items, but are also an educational tool for universities, design schools and architects. Rolf Fehlbaum, President of Vitra: “We can deduce and understand an era, its social order, its materials, its techniques and its taste by observing its chairs. I should point out that no other everyday object offers such diversity. ” In the early 1940s, Charles and Ray Eames spent several years developing a technique for moulding plywood into 3D shapes, thus creating a series of furniture and sculptures. Among these early models, the two-part elephant piece proved to be the most technically demanding due to its complex curves, and so the object never reached serial production. One of the prototypes, which was given as a gift to Lucia Eames, Charles' 14-year-old daughter, was loaned to the Museum of Modern Art in New York for an exhibition in 1946. It remains in the possession of the Eames family. After a limited edition in 2007, Vitra has now added a plywood version of the legendary Eames Elephant to its signature range of products. The decorative sculptural figure featuring a high-quality American Cherry veneer has been available since 2017. Many years ago, the Eames Elephant was made of plastic, which made it accessible for the target group for which it was originally designed: children. A smaller version - with an identical design but on a smaller scale - is also available in plastic in several colours.