The plywood elephant has an important place among the plywood pieces designed by Eameses. In the early 1940s, Charles and Ray Eames successfully developed an innovative method for molding plywood into three-dimensional shapes, which they used to produce a wide variety of furniture and sculptural objects.
Among the first plywood designs, the Elephant is one of the most difficult to produce. Narrow angles and compound curves require advanced mastery of plywood technology.
Designed at the same time as the children’s furniture, the Plywood Elephant can also be seen as a playful counterpart to the leg splints developed by Eameses for military applications, the first mass-produced objects made of three-dimensional molded plywood.
Plywood Elephant, which requires complex manufacturing methods, was never put into production. Only two prototypes were built and both were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1945-46. Today, the Eames family has only one known model left. In 2007, Vitra produced the first commercial production of the legendary Eames Plywood Elephant as a limited edition Collector’s Edition.
Scale : 1:6
Dimensions (cm):
Height: 7 cm x Width: 7 cm x Depth: 13 cm
