Carrie Fisher’s original Star Wars audition (on an Eames shell chair)
Another great actress very sadly left us in 2016 – Carrie Fisher – who is most well known for playing Princess Leia (Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, later known as General Leia Organa, to be precise) in Star Wars. Her effervescent wit and charm led us here at Film and Furniture to spend several hours scouring the web for interviews with her, after we heard the news.
We came across this delightfully cool, calm and collected original audition for Star Wars which can be seen in the clip below. And as luck would have it, she delivers her lines from an Eames molded fibreglass “shell” armchair, a design classic originally designed in 1950 and a firm Film and Furiture favourite.
This series of Eames chairs come in different shapes and sizes with varying configurations of legs in wood and metal. The one Carrie Fisher sits on here appears to be an Eames Molded Fiberglass 4-Leg Armchair DFAX or LAX.
Serious Eames connoisseurs look for chairs from the early period 1950-1953, with a “Miller-Zenith” label on their undersides. The ones with wooden bases (DAW, PAW) are less common and thus more sought-after than the ones with metal legs (DAR, LAX, LAR, RAR).
Thanks to a new proprietary process of producing fiberglass, Herman Miller is once again able to produce the Eames original 1950 Molded Fiberglass Chair. Like the original shell chairs, the new fiberglass finish has the same surface variation and tell-tale fiberglass striation that have attracted avid vintage collectors for decades.
Available in both the arm and side chair formats in eight archival colors, the chairs can be configured with a choice of wire, dowel leg, stacking, rocker, and 4-leg bases. An array of trim, finely tailored Hopsak fabrics designed by Alexander Girard, Herman Miller’s Textile Director from 1952 to 1973, round out the collection of shell customization options, fully restoring the integrity of the original 1953 shell chair offerings.
So where can I get one?
Original vintage versions are available from Layer.
You could also try 1st Dibs or Ebay.
Newly (fully licensed) manufactured versions of the chair are available from
Design Within Reach, and The Conran Shop
You may also be interested in these articles:
Charles and Ray Eames Hollywood connections (and how they snuck their furniture into a few films) >
The 1960s Man from UNCLE: The definitive guide to furniture and decor in the original film sets. Part 1 >
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