Hi, all. I have a question about regulatory labeling on a possible Eames Aluminum Group chair. A neighbor was giving away a chair (pictures attached) and told me that it was an authentic Eames chair. I know very little about design and also thought this was BS but on inspection found an Eames stamp on the chair's frame on the bottom. A crash course in MCM followed (with much assistance from designaddict!) and the chair appeared to actually have a lot of the same characteristics as a Side Chair from the Aluminum Group, probably on the older side since it has the four-point base. The biggest thing that makes me doubt it is authentic, however, is the "UNDER PENALTY OF LAW NOT TO BE REMOVED EXCEPT BY CONSUMER." The label itself looks pretty "vintage-y," (I'm basing this on the font, mostly) but I thought I remembered hearing somewhere that "except by consumer" language wasn't added to those "DO NOT REMOVE" mattress tags until sometime in the late 90s. I'm having trouble verifying this online, so--does anyone have any experience or knowledge of whether tags with "except by consumer" clauses were used as early as the 60s or 70s? I don't think I'm really interested in trying to sell the chair or anything, but it'd be good to know if I should make more effort to keep my cat off of it...
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It's real, definitely. That chair has been in continuous production since the late 1950s, and the tag changed to include the words "except by the consumer" sometime in the 1970s. Yours was made after that, but before the five-point base came in.
It's not super-rare or anything, but it's handsome and very well-made and versatile, and heck, it's not like you had to pay a lot for it. I'm sitting in the same chair (manufacture date: 1996) as I type this.
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Edit: I found the date the tags changed. It was 1972.Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=FAUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=mattr...
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