Early Eames shell in odd color  

I was wondering about this myself...
Not the pleasantest of colors, mind. But interesting nonetheless.

Hmmm
Call me skeptical but are those.....horizontal brush strokes in the first pic?
In the second, are those three dark dots by the front shock possibly drips?
Could it possibly be some kind of transparent wood stain?
Are there any close-up pics?

I believe...
This was the same seller that was selling that weird "prototype" X-base a while back.

Spot on I think, beloved...
The seller obviously got creative. The more I look at it, the more it screams wood stain. Hilarious.

I actually like the color....
I actually like the color. I've seen other variations to the 6 original colors before, so a wine red armshell wouldn't have been totally impossible.
But in any case, I also got a bit suspicious and wrote the seller and asked about it. -No response of course...

The sad part is,
the shell was worth decent cash in its original color.
Maybe..... it was originally Salmon and he used a blue tinted stain trying to get purple, but ended up with this wine red instead.
Ha!

is that purple...
IS THAT PURRRPLE?!?!

No, it's "wine red"...
So that means it's okay with you, right?????

Devil's advocate here, so I c...
Devil's advocate here, so I could be very evil and wrong but I don't suspect the chair was stained. That process wouldn't be all that easy, if I am not mistaken (I haven't tried it myself). One would need to use a gel stain rather than the more typical stain, for starters.
I've not seen a chair that I'm aware was stained, but I would guess that a chair which shows a very marked fiber pattern would likely result in highlighting/pronouncing of the stain color within the fibers, which as far as I can see is not borne out at least in the images shown here.
So I'm thinking the chair could possibly, repeat POSSIBLY, be original. And even, god forbid, purple. Remember too that photo software can manipulate the heck out of actual color these days.

I think...
it is a hack job. You can even see a slight swirl around the
mounts and drips. Very uneven overall. Probably a decent custom color could
be done with thinned artist oil paint. (i read that somewhere). I would try it on
a trashed shell. An extremely sun bleached and cracked one. I come across them
on occasion. NYC is a dumpster diving paradise. Those days are over for me but
i'll grab one for a test.

By
the top right mount you can see where the stain or paint hasn't gone right up to it.
I think the shell was originally light grey- possibly cream

More photos would probably...
More photos would probably help, as one of the two shown here is glare-riddled. I see the drips/dots around the one mount in the tight underside shot. But it's actually that tight shot that makes me think the chair might be untouched. At any rate, I doubt I'm right and could be wrong, not to mention, touched.