At the close of the Second World War Charles and Ray Eames developed several prototype moulded plywood tables for manufacture by Evans Products in Los Angeles, among them this model with its distinctive saucer-shaped top. The compound curve of the moulded table top, in which the plywood is curved in three dimensions, was a major breakthrough of the period. The designers intended the table to complement their plywood chairs from the same period and they were designed with the same intent: making minimal use of wood and hardware, mass-produced for efficiency and low cost, and suitable for a variety of uses in the home.

This table bears a label for the manufacturer, Evans Products, and the distributor, Herman Miller. Evans Products was the first firm to make the tables, in California in 1946. In 1947 Charles Eames became a consultant for the Herman Miller Company who took over the distribution, though not the manufacture, of Eames furniture. In the same year Evans Products moved its manufacturing from California to Michigan, and stopped selling its products itself. From 1949 the Herman Miller Company manufactured Eames furniture as well as distributing it, and Evans Products severed all links with the Eameses.

The table was bought by the Russian émigré constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo and his wife Miriam in about 1948/9. They had emigrated from Britain in 1946 and probably bought this for their house in Waterbury, Connecticut. Ironically, in later life Miriam Gabo complained that the rim - the great innovation of plywood moulded into complex curves - simply caused cups and glasses to slide off the table.