The Eames lounge goes to auction tomorrow  

Well, it looks like the link worked. It does for me, anyway.

The Chinese copies have been around for a while, but this would pre-date the Chinese copies.

That strut or arm or whatever it's called that joins the base to the backrest? That was never done, was it?

And those look like screws that fix the struts to the ply? That was never done?

It's little known, but those chairs were made for a brief time down here. Goodness knows why.

It looks like someone is not satisfied with 2 buttons per cushion. It was probably intentional (?) so no one will mistakenly see it as an Eames design.

ScottB, you might have seen these images before that shows all the parts to complete a legit Eames 670 & 671.

Thanks Minimoma.

I had not seen those exploded views before.

That auction place is pretty good and when they know something is not the real deal, they will say something like 'Eames Style'.

I was talking to a mate last night who had seen the chair, too, and he said it was interesting that the base in his words is 'the knife edge base made in the UK under licence by Hillie'.

There will be dealers there who know what's what so I'll be interested in what price it goes for. I will report back.

There are a couple of old Aluminium Group chairs in the auction, but I have plenty of them.

Hille at one time was one of the several HM authorized manufacturers of the 670 & 671 like this ad.

https://goo.gl/images/dQxw5b

Now it is just split between HM & Vitra. ICF was another company but that ended too.

I see what he means by the knife edge base in that ad. I also noticed the Time Life Chair. They are so comfortable. There was a bloke in Sydney selling half a dozen of them a few weeks ago in very good condition.

If you meant the shape of the bases (?) that came from the Aluminum Group originally & that differentiates the European (& others) to the North American versions of the 670 & 671.

I was tempted once to take home a Time Life chair...I like the chair but I am not crossing that line specially when they are still being used in a police station.

Not so much the shape of the bases, but the top edge along each leg - a vertical edge vs flat surface.

Those people sitting in those chairs would not know what they are. Probably wouldn't have missed one. I had 2 old Wassily chairs in my office in the late 80s. They were owned by the business I worked for, but they decided to do an update so I took those chairs home. And our rosewood Eames dining table came to Sydney in the late 80s when my wife worked at Herman Miller. The order was a mistake and sending it back to HM would have been expensive. To avoid having to pay duty on the table, customs here wanted it destroyed. We couldn't let that happen.

That bloke here selling the Time Life chairs would have got them from a business (boardroom probably) that was doing a makeover. They would have written off the chairs so he would have got them for next to nothing.

It sold for $800, so a copy. An old one and a pretty good one, though.