Hi everyone.
Looking at this chair locally. Seller says it's a real Eames bent plywood chair and I'm not totally confident.
If it is real, it's been poorly repaired and drilled through the seat back and bottom. I think it was originally a 5-2-4 and not a 5-2-5. The 5 black screws look original, the middle 2 obviously are not, and the other 5 look like they've been tampered with. Plus it has metal feet. Only remnants of a label appear to be at the front underneath. You can see a rectangular witness mark but I've never seen or heard of one of these chairs having the label in that location.
Any advice would be great. Thanks.
I'm not aware of any 'vintage' replicas of these and I think you're correct that this example has suffered from an unfortunate and ill-advised attempt to repair. Otherwise, the chair appears original to me. One feature that might confirm this would be the presence of a central inner ply veneer in the 'spine' that extends from the underside to only part way past the bend up the back. In other words, the spine should be thicker under the seat panel than behind the back panel.
The rectangular label silhouette is likely evidence of early Herman Miller production after Evans:
http://eames.com/en/articles/labels-stamps
I've seen similar metal glides on more than a few pieces in the 'W' series which may suggest that these were offered as an option at some point.
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