INDOOR OUTDOOR GROUP
Designed by Charles Eames
for the Herman Miller Furniture Company
Zeeland, Michigan: The Herman Miller Furniture Company, [1958]. First edition. Slim quarto. 11 x 17 single-fold brochure printed in two colors showcasing the new ‘Indoor Outdoor Group’ before the more egocentric rename ‘Eames Aluminum Group.’ Semi gloss black wrappers with a few figureprint smudges and a lightly worn spine, but a nearly fine copy.
8.5 x 11 brochure printed in two colors showcasing the Indoor Outdoor Group by Charles Eames. “The Aluminum Group chairs began as a challenge among designers Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard. Eero and Alex collaborated on the residence of industrialist J. Irwin Miller in Columbus, Indiana. They wanted a high-quality seating product for outdoor use and asked Charles and Ray Eames to develop one.
“Known for their honest use of materials, the Eameses constructed their chairs with cast aluminum and a seat frame meant to support a stretched synthetic mesh. The seat-back suspension was a major technical achievement and represented a departure from the concept of the chair as a solid shell.
Those chairs became the Aluminum Group, which Herman Miller began manufacturing in 1958. And while they have been in continuous demand, the line has changed and grown over the years. The original mesh meant for outdoor use was discontinued, along with the 4-star base and painted arms on the early designs.” — The Herman Miller Furniture Company
”Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects, etc., . . . the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” — Charles Eames
Charles (1907 – 1978) and Ray Eames (1912 – 1988) created more than a look with their bent plywood chairs or molded fiberglass seating. They had ideas about making a better world, one in which things were designed to fulfill the practical needs of ordinary people and bring greater simplicity and pleasure to our lives.
”. . . everything hangs on something else.” — Ray Eames
The Eameses adventurously pursued new ideas and forms with a sense of serious fun. Yet, it was rigorous discipline that allowed them to achieve perfection of form and mastery over materials. As Charles noted about the molded plywood chair, “Yes, it was a flash of inspiration,” he said, “a kind of 30-year flash.” Combining imagination and thought, art and science, Charles and Ray Eames created some of the most influential expressions of 20th century design – furniture that remains stylish, fresh and functional today.
And they didn't stop with furniture. The Eameses also created a highly innovative “case study” house in response to a magazine contest. They made films, including a seven-screen installation at the 1959 Moscow World's Fair, presented in a dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. They designed showrooms, invented toys and generally made the world a more interesting place to be. As the most important exponents of organic design, Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated how good design can improve quality of life and human understanding and knowledge.
In a characteristically wry 1944 correspondence with Herman Miller founder, DJ De Pree, George Nelson wrote that “your reservations on my suitability as a designer for Herman Miller Co., impressed me very much for they seem to be well founded… the question of lack of experience in the commercial furniture field is also important, but here, I am afraid, you and your associates will have to make the decision on your own.” Fast forward four years later, and Nelson once again found himself reflecting on the integrity of the Herman Miller Co., but this time, not as a potential hire but rather as Herman Miller’s founding creative director. In the 1948 introduction to the catalogue for his first ever collection for the company, he writes, “From the viewpoint of the designer, which is the only viewpoint I can assume with any degree of propriety, the Herman Miller Furniture Company is a rather remarkable institution.”
Whatever leap of faith was required of De Pree to hire Nelson, the affinity and mutual respect shared between the two was undeniably fruitful. Nelson credits Herman Miller’s singularity as a result of a “philosophy” or “attitude” compounded of a set of principles—that what you make is important; that design is integral to business; that products must be honest; that only we can decide what we make, and that there is a market for good design—that allow for a degree of autonomy and innovation unavailable to companies driven by the shallow demands of the market or sales. “There is no attempt to conform to the so-called norms of ‘public taste,’ nor any special faith in the methods used to evaluate the ‘buying public.’ The reason many people are struck by the freshness of Herman Miller designs is that the company is not playing follow-the-leader.”
"The real asset of Herman Miller at that time," Nelson wrote, "were items one never found on a balance sheet: faith, a cheerful indifference to what the rest of the industry might be up to, lots of nerve, and a mysterious interaction that had everyone functioning at top capacity while always having a very good time."