How to spot a fake or hacked "vintage" Eames chair

Originally published at: How to spot a fake or hacked "vintage" Eames chair | Boing Boing

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But if it’s comfortable and looks well built then why not save some money and buy the fake.

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Considering real ones cost at least 8000 bucks I’d be happy with a fake. Ha.


Then again if I was rich enough to spend that kind of money I’d be pretty pissed if I spent it on a fake.

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I check all furniture for bloodstains and other bodily fluids before buying. Or sitting down.

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Yeah, exactly. I’ve made a bargain with myself that when Mrs Peas and I have reached a certain financial level, I am going to buy one of the Eames knockoff brands. The one I have my eye on claims to be 100% true to spec for the original, so that’s good enough for me and it’s “only” about $1,500 depending on options (ETA: ok, after trumpflation, it’s more like $1,700)

Honestly, I never really got the aesthetic of the original until I sat in one. They are incredibly cozy. I could definitely see living out my twilight years in one.

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some consider it a feature: now you too can have the dna of a famous person shipped direct to on your chair.

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A word of warning:you may also need a UV flashlight.

csi-1418-finn-luminol

A fellow soul!

I’ve wanted one of these since I first saw one on ‘Frasier’, it only got to sit in a genuine Eames a few weeks ago - oh dear Lord that’s a gorgeous chair…

My place is a bit too small, but do I really need a sofa? It only encourages other people to come round.

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They were also made, as the Eames’s were partners as well as partners, with a male and female model. I bought a knockoff for a significant birthday for my significant other last year and she uses it without cushions as it fits her just right.

I hate cushions on chairs as furniture is all designed for me, I’m pretty much a slightly taller and slimmer Reference Man, but she always puts cushions on chairs to make them comfortable for her.

Knockoffs are actually pretty hard to buy in most of Europe I believe. Obviously Scandinavia and Italy are pretty harsh on copies of mid century modern. I had a conversation with Charles Stross online about it last year as he had one and was surprised I was still able to buy one as the EU law cracking down on furniture knock offs was fairly aggressively enforced in the UK. As it happens I bought off a UK website which was actually very local - like they were actually in Dublin. I don’t think that the coppers care much about it here as we don’t make much furniture.

Also inflation: they were $6k when I was looking at them last year from Herman Miller. This was not an option! We also bought knock off Hans Wegner Wishbone chairs for our kitchen table and they make me happy every meal.

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My partner has tiny legs, so any sofa that fits average humans simply does not work. Her feet pretty much stick over the edge of the cushions. We saw one in a shop the other day that would be perfect for her, but no-one else. It was literally child-size.

Maybe we should just get snidey Eames chairs in the right proportions for both of us, and everyone else can just sit on the floor :thinking:

An elderly relative, now dead, heard that I was enamored of mid-century design. She said that she had an Eames chair that we should take home. She was very proud of this and we oohed and aahed and were very grateful. It was a total fake, and pretty obvious too. We gave it away (being honest about the provenance). But this elderly relative also gave me a 1960 Olympia typewriter. She was OK.

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uses it without cushions as it fits her just right.

Okay, firstly these things aren’t gonna do anyone any favors stuffed with the OG feathers.
But now I am imagining your s.o. sitting in the bent wood and liking it and also maybe she has a head that is also 16:4, I just don’t know.
Would everyone please stop doing anything Modern Design? Though I could look foward to Tesla Truck wrecks that look like any Eames Chair. (Not expecting Deus Ex in-game art as a traffic object? Bet you didn’t expect '60s airport furniture of unusual size either.)

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That was my first thought, too! But then I remembered that @robertmckenna is in Ireland, where they use the word “cushions” for what we USians would call “pillows”, and then it all made sense :smile:

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Only now for me. I had no idea what was going on.

ETA
Pillow: head.
Cushion: arse.

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Not sure why a “hacked” chair is necessarily a bad thing. It means one or more otherwise damaged and perhaps scrapped chairs have been made usable again.
Sure, if you’re in the market for new or all-original and you’re paying that kind of price for it, you want it to be as advertised. But the idea of rebuilt salvage is appealing for the right price.

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