RAR - Eames Plastic Armchair Rocking chair - / (1950) - Black legs & dark wood by Vitra Red

Treat yourself to an ORIGINAL iconic piece by Vitra. An original will always hold its value. It will stay with you for your whole life and outlast you, to be passed on to the next generation. Swiss design house Vitra is the only company authorised to manufacture Charles & Ray Eames products for Europe: if you own an Eames product manufactured by Vitra, you can be sure it’s an original. Charles and Ray Eames are two of the most important designers of the 20th century. The first plastic chairs to be mass-produced, the Shell Chairs by Charles and Ray Eames are among the major creations in the history of furniture. “Making the best available to the many" is how Charles and Ray Eames described one of their main aims as furniture designers. Of all their creations, none came closer to this goal than the Plastic Chairs. The idea of creating a one-piece moulded seat shell, adapted to the human body, was the focus of this pair of designers for many years. After experimenting with plywood and aluminium sheeting in the 1940s without producing satisfactory results, their search for alternative materials led them to glass-fibre-reinforced polyester resin. This material, which was completely unheard-of in the furniture industry at the time, allowed moulded shells to be developed and refined up to mass production. This one-piece, organically shaped shell turned out to be a much-admired innovation at a time when chairs were, for the most part, composed of a seat and a back. Fibreglass offered the added benefit of a pleasant feel and a perfectly moulded shell for extraordinary comfort. After their initial presentation at the Low Cost Furniture Design competition organised by the Museum of Modern Art in 1948, the Plastic Armchair (A-shell) and Plastic Side Chair (S-shell) were introduced to the market in 1950, as the first mass-produced plastic chairs. With the launch of this revolutionary creation, Charles and Ray Eames introduced a new type of furniture that has since spread around the world: the multifunctional chair whose shell can be combined with a wide variety of different bases. As early as 1950, Charles and Ray Eames presented a whole series of different bases with a remarkable design such as the Eiffel Tower base - a filigree steel wire structure with an unparalleled combination of lightness in its form and stability in its structure. One model has always stood out from the vast family of chairs: the Rocking Armchair Rod Base (RAR). Despite its compact dimensions, this rocking chair offers pleasant comfort even for tall users. With a steel wire base on wooden rockers, the Fiberglass Chair RAR is an armchair with an iconic shape that’s immediately recognisable. Today, Vitra manufactures RAR armchairs with two different shells: the Eames Plastic Chairs have a polypropylene shell while Eames Fiberglass Chairs have a glass-fibre-reinforced polyester resin shell just like the first models. Like the original armchair, this fibreglass version has a lively texture: the slightly irregular surface material has clearly visible fibres that give it an almost natural look. Due to the high quality of Vitra originals, the manufacturer offers a 10-year guarantee (register your product on the dedicated website to benefit from the extended warranty).