Eames Elephant

In the early 1940s, Charles and Ray Eames spent several years developing a technique for molding plywood into three-dimensional shapes, creating a series of furniture and sculptures in the process.
and sculptures in the process. Of these early designs, the two-piece elephant proved to be the most technically demanding due to its complex curves, and the piece never reached mass production. Charles' 14-year-old daughter, Lucia Eames, was given a prototype that was later borrowed for the 1946 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It still exists in the Eames family archives. After a limited edition in 2007, Vitra has now added a plywood version of the legendary Eames Elephant to its standard product range. The decorative sculptural figure featuring a high-quality American cherry veneer has been available since 2017. Several years earlier, the Eames Elephant was made of plastic, which made it accessible to the target group for which it was originally designed children. A smaller version - with the same design but scaled down - is also available in plastic in various colors.