Bringing the Indoors Back Out
Our lives don’t stop outside the walls of our buildings, and our furniture shouldn’t either. A fact addressed by Charles and Ray Eames with the Aluminum Group. Originally referred to as the “Indoor-Outdoor Group,” the Eameses intended their design to blur the distinction between patio and living room in the modern home.
To make the Aluminum Group chairs appropriate for outdoors, the Eameses found saran—a cloth-like fabric made of woven plastic fibers. Porous and fast drying, they felt it was the ideal material for life outside. Perhaps ahead of its time, saran proved to have durability issues forcing the Eameses to abandon it just a year or two after production. Consequently the entire collection migrated indoors.
Today, the Eames Aluminum Group is once again ready for life on your patio. Building on the yarn and weave technology pioneered in Pellicle, we have developed with designer Susan Lyons a new outdoor upholstery option called Outdoor Weave. Porous, fast drying, and durable, it meets all of the characteristics Charles and Ray demanded of saran.
Any correlation between the abandoned saran material and Saran plastic wrap? It’s the first thing it made me think of.