The Chair is also very hard to categorise as a type. Possibly, it can be said to be part of a broader design idiom that emerged in American culture in the 1950s, including the Boeing Superfortress aircaft (or indeed the subsequent Boeing Stratocruiser airline), the US Army original jeep, the small truck, or the Lincoln Zephyr Coupe automobile (recent selling pitches by Lincoln for their 2006 Zephyr model astutely emphasise the Eames inspiration for the seats!) This idiom is unselfconsciously but mechanistically common to all: as informal products of an effortless self-confidence about a robust 'fitness for purpose' - running from the most basic specifications to an indisputable luxury - these designs, indeed, seem to us today both unselfconscious and non-prescriptive. But they are all, to a greater or lesser extent, design icons. How was this achieved?

The Eames Lounge Chair and its exhibition came to New York earlier this year, hosted by the Museum of Arts and Design. We learn in the catalogue of the discussions that took place between curators to plan the exhibitions in January 2004, which endeavoured to position the Chair historically and culturally. 'What were the characteristics of its cultural moment in mid-1950s America? What did possession of such a chair say about its owners - that they were modern in personal style and open to ideas, comfortable in their skins?' The continuing and long-term commitment to design of Herman Miller, the producer, was a significant element. As the curators sat, well intentioned, in a wide circle of Eames Lounge Chairs, they wrestled with such definitions. It has to be said that, curiously, the Chair never seems to 'work' when grouped in such a way, whether paired in fours or sixes. It is a single icon, positioned in space, and not really subject to repetitive installation. But these wise discussions still bore fruit, as the swivels swivelled across the circle. 'Were they modern in personal style, open to ideas, comfortable in their skins? Did that describe us as we communally lounged?' asked the curators (as reported by Celeste Adams, Director at Grand Rapids).

In the catalogue there is a lengthy argument by one of these curators, Martin Eidelberg, Emeritus Professor of Art History at Rutgers University, entitled 'Charting the Iconic Chair'. This article comprehensively explores the view that the chair cannot be positioned in any European-derived trajectory of modern furniture. The full sequence of chairs is surveyed, from Josef Hoffmann in Vienna, to Marcel Breuer's Wassily Club Chair and the path pioneered in the 1930s by the Finnish master Alvar Aalto in the use of molded plywood. Eidelberg explains in detail how Aalto's 'breakthrough' in molded plywood evolved, (as demonstrated in his famous 'Springleaf' armchair (1933). Laminated wood is employed for the frame, and plywood for the seat and back. Aalto's chairs were first exhibited in 1938 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The development of the Eames Lounge Chair came relatively late on the American scene, influenced partly by Aalto and Eeero Saarinen. Conceived originally in 1953-54, it was not ready for production launching until 1956. Eidelberg affirms that in terms of innovation, the Eames Lounge Chair was not entirely far advanced. It had a reassuring 'comforting' idiom - not too modern at all: but that all worked. The fact that there were 50 steps, no less, in the assembly of the many parts (which denied some aspects of the prevailing Modernist ethos). It indicated, 'a shift away from the puritan asceticism of the first half of the 20th century. 'Was the Lounge Chair successful because of its unabashed combination of Modernity and traditionalism?' asks Eidelberg, perhaps playfully. Was it not a frontrunner for post-Modernism? Robert Venturi in his famous manifesto work, 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' (Museum of Modern Art Papers on Architecture 1966; 1) certainly did not rise to the bait, nor did Charles Jencks in his later prognosis. Maybe the Eames Lounge Chair, in its very uniqueness, and all-American 1950s nature, was just too difficult to define.

The Eames Lounge Chair would seem to be prone to copying on account of its quality, but despite a bout of this in the 1990s, this has been legally prevented. The mere fact that there are so many stages in the actual assembly of the Chair seems to have acted anyway as a major deterrent. In a recent US court decision in favour of the Herman Miller Company that still produces it in Michigan, the key characteristics that now define the Eames Chair have been codified clearly as follows:

• Smooth, curved, molded shells: the lounge chair having three shells, the ottoman having one
• The molded shells being exposed from below the ottoman and from the back, sides, and underside of the chair
• The edges of each molded shell being exposed from the front of the lounge chair and ottoman
• Each of the molded shells being shaped like a flattened 'U'
• Each molded shell with cushioned upholstery
• Each molded shell having 'buttons' that create permanent creases in the upholstery
• The back of the lounge chair consisting of two molded shells, connected in the rear by two exposed bars, each bar being angled to tilt the upper molded shell slightly forward of the lower molded shell
• The angled bars spaced from the shells
• Upholstered armrests that extend downwardly into the chair and that connect the two molded back shells to the molded seat shell.

(See Herman Miller FED App. O337P)

The Eames Lounge Chair never seems to have furnished exotic suites in the movie world - yet it seems right for Raymond Chandler movie set pieces. It seems sadly to have been overlooked by Alfred Hitchcock for 'North-by-Northwest', where it would have been a perfect fit for the duplicitous spy played by James Mason. But taste always moves on, in the hands of its media arbiters. In a photo shoot from the early 1990s, the catalogue records how the fresh-faced Steve Jobs of Apple (bare-footed) and ever youthful Bill Gates of Microsoft sit posed in a relaxed mood: Jobs is in the chair, while Gates flatters him by squatting on the ottoman beside him. Here, the Eames Lounge Chair has moved to pole position as the seat of real and ultimate power, in this early 1991 colour shot of 'informal, but total control'. Each item of furniture projects a telling narrative (with hindsight from 15 years later) about the two owners. In his catalogue essay, Thomas Hine tries keenly to position this Icon in terms of the collective culture and, ironically, only partly succeeds as he shows in the era of the failed 1950s Ford Edsel car - revealing the downside of the first post-war consumer surge. As Hine postulates, the Chair fitted the moment when, 'most Americans felt they could lead more luxurious lives'. But sales were never dramatic, even if steady: it took half a century to sell over 100,000 Chairs. The Edsel was a commercial failure, by contrast, but in the three years of actual production, the same number of cars were sold, such was the strength of the US economy at that time. And, of course, virtually all the Edsels have gone to a pressing engagement: the chair, by contrast, priced at $578 dollars with footstool in 1956, is still manifestly very much around. They last well, and today the resale value is about $4,500 altogether (2,756 were sold in 2004). What is not often realised is the extent to which the Eames' experience in designing a molded plywood leg splint for the US Navy (1943), itself a beautiful object, fed into the development of the Chair. This, of course, follows a production development sequence not uncommon where wartime products lead to useful peacetime spin-off. At the other end of the chronology there is a very revealing inclusion in the catalogue of the numerous advertising and promotional techniques used to market the chair. Self-evidently, too, this expanded the milieu of the Chair to include its users as Martin Scorsese, Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller and, in Britain, Tom Stoppard, all comfortable possessors of the Icon. The Chair seems to have been a special predilection of intellectuals, rising academics and design-oriented executives. This single, pivotal resting place allows the occupant to survey all, and to presume to be master of all he (or she) surveys. It seems that more often than not 'she' is relegated to the slimmer Aluminium Group Lounge Chair and footstool, in all their elegance, likewise also free to pivot and pivot. Occasionally, the Icon occupant would sport a pipe in earlier days, but no longer. In young families, the Chair becomes a permanently revolving roundabout. Which is where this writer himself came in, and his young children, circa 1970, all thanks to Zeev Aram formerly of Kings Road, Chelsea. This particular Charles Eames Lounge Chair has survived two generations of dynamics. None were actually conceived in the Chair, but it's always possible. Long live this contemporary, global masterpiece: and 'salut' to both Charles and Ray Eames in this timely commemoration.

Michael Spens