Skip Navigation

Leg Splint

Decorative Arts and Design

On View: Decorative Art, 20th-Century Decorative Arts, 4th Floor
Called by the U.S. Navy during World War II to create a lightweight, inexpensive leg splint for injured personnel, the California designers Charles and Ray Eames employed molded plywood to produce a functional yet sculptural form that informed their later furniture designs.
MEDIUM Plywood
  • Place Manufactured: Venice, California, United States
  • DATES designed 1941-1942; manufactured 1943-1945
    DIMENSIONS 42 x 4 1/4 x 8 in. (106.7 x 10.8 x 20.3 cm)  (show scale)
    MARKINGS Branded on inside section behind ankle: "S2-1790"; stamped in green on outside near top: "MOLDED PLYWOOD DIVISION / LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA / patent pending [...] EAMES [...]"; circular logo containing "EVANS PRODUCTS COMPANY" around circle, and crisscrossing in center: "EVANS / EVANS"
    SIGNATURE no signature
    INSCRIPTIONS no inscriptions
    ACCESSION NUMBER 83.156
    CREDIT LINE Anonymous gift
    CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Long piece of plywood molded to the human leg, flaring out at the top to fit against the buttocks and tapering in at the bottom to support the lower leg and foot. Numerous rectangular cut-out sections to allow for ties to secure leg to splint. CONDITION: Good. No finishing solution was applied to surface. Some splits in surface due to normal production.
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is on view in Decorative Art, 20th-Century Decorative Arts, 4th Floor
    CAPTION Charles Eames (American, 1907-1978). Leg Splint, designed 1941-1942; manufactured 1943-1945. Plywood, 42 x 4 1/4 x 8 in. (106.7 x 10.8 x 20.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Anonymous gift, 83.156. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 83.156_mark_bw.jpg)
    IMAGE mark, 83.156_mark_bw.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
    "CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
    RIGHTS STATEMENT Creative Commons-BY
    You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
    RECORD COMPLETENESS
    Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.