Compliments of Evans Products Co.

This Evans Products promotional postcard evokes the important relationship that Ray and Charles Eames began with the Evans Products Company in 1942—first to make molded plywood leg splints for the US Navy, and later, molded plywood chairs and tables. Led by industrialist Edward S. Evans, the Evans Products Company was among the most diversified and innovative companies in America with operations that included the sale of automatic loading devices for freight cars, heating and venting equipment for buses and cars, and—as owners of vast tracts of Pacific Northwest forests—lumber for construction and plywood products. In 1940, they built what was purported to be the biggest plywood mill in the world in Lebanon, Oregon—and its success led to a 115 percent growth in the town’s population over the following decade. During World War II, Evans led a nationwide crusade for the utilization of wood waste to help conserve the nation’s lumber resources, and thus found kindred, problem-solving spirits in Ray and Charles Eames. With the Eameses’ expertise in molding plywood, Charles was made head of the Evans Molded Plywood Products Division at a salary of $5,000 a year. In addition, he and Ray were to receive generous royalties on not just the splints, but on all products made by the patented Eames process for three-dimensionally molded plywood. These included the aforementioned splints, other experimental plywood designs for the US Navy, and by the war’s end, consumer products like tables, chairs, screens, and radios. The Eameses worked with Evans through 1948, at which time Herman Miller took on the equipment and responsibility to manufacture and distribute Eames designs.