Charles and Ray Eames designed the 670 in 1956 as a chair "with the warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt." Ours keeps the mitt, and lets go of nearly everything else. The shell is a single piece of cross-laminated walnut, bent in one operation rather than three, with the inside face left raw and oiled — no veneer, no fill.

The original sat on a five-star aluminum base. Ours sits on a four-leg sand-cast bronze tetrapod, weighted to balance the lighter shell, polished only at the foot where it meets the floor. The cushions are under-stuffed by twelve percent against the 1956 specification — a leaner profile, more reading-chair than recliner, hand-stitched in waxed olive thread by a single maker in Brooklyn.

It is, in the end, a chair you sit in to read for an hour. Not a chair you photograph.