#HTE

A Never-Manufactured Eames Design for a Radio, Deemed Too Radical in 1946, Now Being Produced by Vitra

According to Vitra, in 1946 Charles and Ray Eames designed a tabletop radio with a housing made of bent plywood, and this “was rejected by the designated manufacturer, who wanted a ‘normal design’.”

Charles and Ray sent photographs of the prototype to the magazine 'Interiors’; matchbooks were included in the pictures as a scale reference. Their aim was to increase the acceptance of smaller, more modern devices.
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The device never saw manufacture. But Vitra apparently owns the design as they’re now, some 70 years later, rolling it out–albeit with some design modifications:

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As you can see it’s got four extra buttons, presumably to manage the Bluetooth features Vitra’s added, and of course there’s an LCD.

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A couple of things bug me about this. One, they’ve placed the Eames signature on the face of the radio. Firstly I think Charles and Ray would’ve found this tacky, and secondly, they didn’t actually sign off on this modified design, so the signature is kind of a lie.

Second thing that bugs me: Limited-Edition-ness. They’re only producing an arbitrary-sounding 999 of these, for $999 each. As always I find it ironic that the Eameses set out to produce good design for the masses, yet the modern-day rights holders to their designs seem to keep them frustratingly out of reach.

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https://www.core77.com/posts/79928/A-Never-Manufactured-Eames-Design-for-a-Radio-Deemed-Too-Radical-in-1946-Now-Being-Produced-by-Vitra