Three-legged tray table (Prototype)

This extraordinary prototype was built in 1945 by the Eames Office and the Molded Plywood Division as one of their experiments in creating a low-cost table that married a plywood top with a metal rod frame. On the underside of this example's tray top, the metal frame slides into three slotted blocks, instead of employing the usual screws. It is believed that two or three of this model were made, which was subsequently exhibited in the late 1945 and 1946 New York exhibitions at the Barclay Hotel, the Architectural League, and the seminal show New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames at the Museum of Modern Art.
The exact exhibition history of the present lot is currently unknown. The table was given by the Eames to Carl Anderson, the filmmaker and furniture designer who formed half of Anderson and Bellah, the team who submitted award-winning rattan designs to the Organic Design in Home Furnishings exhibition held at MoMA in 1941, when Eames and Saarinen won for their plywood chair designs.

Plywood and black-painted metal
18 1/2 x 35 x 22 7/8 in. (47 x 88.9 x 58.1 cm)

Provenance:
Charles and Ray Eames
Carl and Dorothy Anderson
Acquired by the present owners, ca. 1974

Literature:
John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, and Ray Eames, Eames Design, New York, 1989, pp. 62 and 68