Beginning in 1943, the Eameses rented a former garage at 901 Washington Blvd., Venice, Calif., which they shared with the Evans company, a producer of large molded-plywood objects. It was in the garage that the Eameses built the hydroplane fuselage and their first mass-produced furniture. Evans manufactured the furniture from 1946 to 1949, at which point the Michigan firm of Herman Miller obtained the exclusive rights. Some Eames chairs produced in the 1940s carry the labels of both companies, suggesting that Evans was a subcontractor for Herman Miller for a time, as Zenith, another California company, would be.

It is often said that Gilbert Rohde, the chief designer at Herman Miller, invited the Eameses to work for the firm. This is doubtful in that the first Eames pieces produced by Herman Miller date from 1945—1946, and Rohde died in 1944. It is more likely that the company took notice of the Eameses after Charles’ personal exhibition at MOMA in 1946. The partnership soon extended beyond furniture design. Charles Eames would design Miller catalogs and, in 1950, the display at the Herman Miller store in Los Angeles. In 1954 he designed and built a home for Max De Pree, the son of of Herman Miller’s founder Dirk Jan (D. J.) De Pree, in Zeeland, Mich., site of the Herman Miller factory.

In 1957, a Swiss company, Vitra, won the right to manufacture Herman Miller furniture, including pieces designed by the Eameses, for the European market. Protracted negotiations were involved, including copyright discussions, and the Eameses took part. The present owner of Vitra, Rolf Fehlbaum, recalls that with his schoolboy knowledge of English he was sometimes called on to help translate for his father (who did not know English). Today Eames furniture has only two legal producers — Herman Miller in the US and Vitra in Europe.

The Eameses faced complex construction problems in making their molded plywood furniture. A sheet of plywood can take only so much folding. The glue can give way under pressure, and the layers then separate. To circumvent the pressure problem, Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen in 1940 had cut an opening in the plywood at the point of greatest pressure, the point where the back transitions into the seat. But the chairs still failed, as we know, and mass production was canceled. Over time, the Eameses came up with other solutions. Finally, however, they had to separate the back from the seat, using separate back and seat plates affixed to the frame. The shape of the frame also took much time and experimentation, but the early prototypes already include the famous three-legged design.

The plywood chairs that Evans and then Herman Miller have been producing since 1946 — the DCM (Dining Chair Metal), LCM (Lounge Chair Metal), DCW and LCW (with plywood bases) — are