In the early 1940s, designers and newlyweds Charles and Ray Eames pioneered a production method to simultaneously bend plywood in more than one direction, using their homemade Kazam machine. With this innovation, which the artists named for its speed and efficiency-you put in a piece of wood and "Kazam!" It's bent!-they won a commission from the U.S. Navy to design plywood leg splints and stretchers for wounded sailors, featuring compound curves to support the body. They applied the same technology after the war in the body-conforming design of the DCW and DCM. This chair was exhibited in 1947 at the Museum of Modern Art, after which the Eameses gave it to their friend and fellow furniture designer Edward J. Wormley. This early example shows details of the original design-such as the rubber caps on the feet-that were modified in later production.

This text was adapted from Ward, et al., MFA Highlights: American Decorative Arts & Sculpture (Boston, 2006) available at www.mfashop.com/mfa-publications.html.

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