How Can You Tell A Fake Eames Chair? 2024

Often, fake Eames chair copies have a base that is constructed with square feet, or the feet may have a steep slope. A genuine Eames reclining ottoman will have four legs coming from the base, not five, as can be seen in copies of the design. The original Eames chair (not the ottoman) should also be able to rotate 360 degrees. The best way to find out whether the lounge chair you’re looking at is an authentic Eames lounge chair or reproduction is to study reality.

Just like with money, you look at reality long enough and know if something is wrong. Here are a few things to look for when identifying an Eames lounge chair. The first thing to check when buying an Eames Shell Chair is to look for the label. In the United States, the label would be Herman Miller.

The company logo features two sharp pongs with a U-shaped interior. If you buy from Europe, the label is from Vitra. Original Joe Chair, Wegner Flag Halyard Chair, and the Eames Group Chair are each great, but I think this particular Eames thing is a big dud. But what if someone visits your home and points out that your Eames is actually wrong? To avoid this situation, read this OneHoWTO article to learn how to tell a fake Eames Chair from a real one.

When you compare a fake Eames Shell Chair with a real one, the first thing you’ll notice is the difference in ratio. Any chair that is similar to the Eames Shell chair, but costs much less than the original, is most likely a fake. I have a Geoform Eames chair that looks like the real one except that there are covered screw caps on the base of the chair part that match the wood grain. You can’t sit back and relax – imitations often have a mechanism to lean back on, but authentic Eames lounge chairs cannot be reclined.

I’ve enjoyed reading this and other posts and coming back to them as I navigate my own journey to an Eames chair (a brown model from the 1970s is now coming to me). The biggest structural difference between vintage knock-offs and reality is that the plywood shells of the Eames chair are continuous, with no exposed hardware (except, of course, the vertical struts that hold the center and top shell together). Now HM is making them out of plastic and neither they nor the Eames heirs will allow Modernica to sell their chairs as authentic Eames chairs. So if you come across an Eames shell chair with a shiny, polished finish, you’ve stumbled upon a fake.

Take the Eames Shell (DS and DA) chairs, which the “authentic” Herman Miller converted to polypropylene, while the Modernica “copies” are the original fiberglass.