We bought this from an estate in Zeeland MI, home of Herman Miller, and the woman swore her parents received it from her thier best friends who were HM executives and that it was said to be a prototype...possibly an Eames DCM prototype. It has shock mounts, is made out of wood and wrought iron and seems quite rough at the welds. She said it pre-dates her, and she was born in '55. I cant seem to find another one like it anywhere. It looks very similar to Macobb's design as well as Nelson for Arbuck, Pascoe and Umanoff. I don't know.
I would love to hear from all you other fanatics!!!!
If any one has any idea I would just love some insight,
Thanks!!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84391254@N03/7730597572/in/photostream 
<img class="wpforo-default
Ouch
There is a theme running it would seem that people asking for attributions on amazing items (such as this bold claim of a prototype) are "making it up", which is not always true, but sometimes it is.
I have to find it incredulous that with as much information as you had in the first place about the chair, that rather than researching locally directly with the family & friends who apparently could have been located to verify the story as you knew the lady, who could have given names of the family, and friends who were executives at HM, that you instead would come onto this forum instead.
Asking if a certain chair or item is the work of this person or that person etc. is one thing, but to seriously ask people on a design forum if this chair is a prototype of a DCM - one of the most well documented chairs one could ever get seems far fetched with genuine prototypes going for god-forsaken sums and being rightly in the realm of true experts to confirm...you come here.
A prototype is a pretty amazing item for any designer, but a DCM from the Eames...that's just too much.
I can understand people with so-so items getting an anonymous expert to say "yes, it is" and then you running with it, but this item you are talking about is another realm of identification entirely. A P-R-O-T-O-T-Y-P-E.
If someone by oft chance had said "Oh yeah, looks like a prototype to me..." what would have been your next step? If it was the step that would have to have been done which would have been researching it with the leads you already had, then I guess there was no real need to come onto here with it in the first place.
Seeing as the person you purchased it from knew the entire prototype story, and was totally 100% sure, I mean, who would make a up a lie about their own dead family, right? I imagine you must be out of pocket no less than well over a $2,000 as no one in their right mind with such a certainty on such a story would EVER let a prototype of a DCM go cheap.
It must have struck you as your lucky day to be so lucky that she was willing to give it up at an Estate sale and not just call Wright or Rago to come pick it up.
Oh no, I won't call you a liar...but how about a follow up post when you tell us all on this forum the stern words you had with the seller who gave FIRST HAND attribution statements to you and took you for a ride for THOUSANDS of dollars.
Let us know how that story unfolds if you do not mind.
The line given
Pardon me.
You mean that story that we were given - if from some fellow walked up to you in a shop and told you that - you would swallow it?
Sort of like letting the boss say whatever he likes and smile along.
It isn't like we were told a tale about "I purchased from a person who purchased it from a person who stated he had his mother's friends from HM give the chair..."
According to the story as told, the person asking the attribution has had direct contact with the family in possession of the chair and they have direct contact with the people in question.
But people who know they have Ray and Charles Eames Prototypes are always selling them to anyone at an Estate Sale, this is a common thing of course.
Funny thing is?
Of all of the designers it was only Eames who left the landscape strewn with prototypes. The truth of the matter is that Eames prototypes are not all that uncommon, which is not to say that they are easily acquired, at this point they have been snapped up by collectors and are sitting comfortably in their collections. The point is that there are more than a few still extant.
Because of this liberal smattering of Eames prototypes a person might hope to uncover yet another, especially with un-reality shows on TV like American Pickers and Antiques Roadshow fueling the fires. This has created a environment where the wildest claims based upon the most flimsy and easily refuted evidence are frequently asserted (if there is even any evidence at all).
In the tale told above by clemmywoowoo our earnestly hopeful young collector never once does he/she state that it is such a thing as a prototype only that they were told a story and that in his or her own imperfect understanding of such things it seems similar to just every other named designers work in wrought iron that they have ever read about in this forum or on the web.
All lampooning aside clemmywoowoo was asking for an opinion and/or help determining whether this facetious tale was true and I am sure that given the evidence presented we have now firmly extinguished the passionately hopeful flames burning in clemmywoowoo's heart.
I had a bad day at the office,
should I slap my wife around, kick the dog, or come down heavy on someone who asks an innocent question on Design Addict? Kudos to Straylight for stepping up and defending Clemmywoowoo. Oh, and feel free to make fun of my user-name all those who haven't outgrown elementary school.
the rug in question
is a totally ordinary, probably early 20th century, hand-woven carpet.
I mean, it won't command $50K at auction, but it's a completely typical small rug, vastly better than all the fake synthetic machine-woven crap cluttering up craigslist--those rugs pimped out by cynical big box stores, branded with the names of various Middle Eastern regions they've never seen....
could we all stop being so snotty?
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