|
Ray & Charles
Eames
- Wholesale Designer Furniture
Charles (1907–1978) and Ray (1912–1988) Eames were
American designers, married in 1941, who worked and made major
contributions in many
fields of design including industrial design, furniture
design, art, graphic design, film and architecture.
Charles Ormond Eames, Jr (June 17, 1907 – August 21,
1978) was born in 1907 in Saint Louis, Missouri. Charles was
born the nephew of St.
Louis architect William S. Eames. By the time he was 14
years old, while attending high school, Charles worked at the
Laclede Steel
Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about
engineering, drawing, and architecture (and also first
entertained the idea of one
day becoming an architect).
Charles briefly studied architecture at Washington
University in St. Louis on an architectural scholarship. After
two years of study, he
left the university. Many sources claim, with little
evidence, that he was dismissed for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd
Wright and his interest
in modern architects. Several websites claim that "In the
report describing why he was dismissed from the university, a
professor wrote
the comment 'His views were too modern.'" This alleged
comment has yet to be attributed to any specific member of the
architectural faculty.
Other sources, less frequently cited, note that while a
student, Charles Eames also was employed as an architect at the
firm of
Trueblood and Graf. The demands on his time from this
employment and from his classes, led to sleep-deprivation and
diminished performance
at the university. It needs to be explored and researched
further to determine the actual cause of his departure from the
university,
rather than repeating the old, unverified story of his
being a victim of backward-looking faculty who supposedly threw
him out simply for
his points of view.
While at Washington University, he met his first wife,
Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they
had a daughter,
Lucia.
In 1930, Charles began his own architectural practice in
St. Louis with partner Charles Gray. They were later joined by a
third partner,
Walter Pauley.
Charles Eames was greatly influenced by the Finnish
architect Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect,
would become a partner
and friend). At the elder Saarinen's invitation, Charles
moved in 1938 with his wife Catherine and daughter Lucia to
Michigan, to further
study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where
he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design
department. In
order to apply for the Architecture and Urban Planning
Program, Eames defined an area of focus—the St. Louis
waterfront. Together with Eero
Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New
York's Museum of Modern Art "Organic Design in Home Furnishings"
competition. Their
work displayed the new technique of wood moulding
(originally developed by Alvar Aalto), that Eames would further
develop in many
moulded plywood products, including, beside chairs and
other furniture, splints and stretchers for the U.S. Navy during
World War
II.
In 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married
his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, who was born in Sacramento,
California. He then
moved with her to Los Angeles, California, where they
would work and live for the rest of their lives. In the late
1940s, as part of the
Arts & Architecture magazine's "Case Study" program, Ray
and Charles designed and built the groundbreaking Eames House,
Case Study House 8,
as their home. Located upon a cliff overlooking the
Pacific Ocean, and hand-constructed within a matter of days
entirely of pre-fabricated
steel parts intended for industrial construction, it
remains a milestone of modern architecture.
On June 17, 2008 the US Postal Service released the Eames
Stamps. A pane of 16 stamps celebrating the designs of Charles
and Ray Eames.
Ray-Bernice Alexandra Kaiser Eames (December 15, 1912 –
August 21, 1988) was an American artist, designer, and filmmaker
who, together
with her husband Charles, is responsible for many
classic, iconic designs of the 20th century. She was born in
Sacramento, California.
Having lived in a number of cities during her youth, in
1933 she moved to New York, where she studied abstract painting
with Hans Hofmann.
In September 1940 she began studies at the Cranbrook
Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she met
Charles Eames, marrying him
the following year. Settling in Los Angeles, California,
Charles and Ray Eames would lead an outstanding career in design
and architecture.
Ray Eames died in Los Angeles in 1988, ten years to the
day after Charles.
In the 1950s, the Eameses continued their work in
architecture and modern furniture design. Like in the earlier
moulded plywood work, the
Eameses pioneered innovative technologies, such as the
fiberglass, plastic resin chairs and the wire mesh chairs
designed for Herman
Miller. Charles and Ray would soon channel Charles'
interest in photography into the production of short films. From
their first film,
the unfinished Traveling Boy (1950), to the extraordinary
Powers of Ten (1977), their cinematic work was an outlet for
ideas, a vehicle
for experimentation and education.
The Eameses also conceived and designed a number of
landmark exhibitions. The first of these, Mathematica: a world
of numbers...and
beyond (1961), was sponsored by IBM, and is the only one
of their exhibitions still extant. The Mathematica Exhibition is
still
considered a model for scientific popularization
exhibitions. It was followed by "A Computer Perspective:
Background to the Computer Age"
(1971) and "The World of Franklin and Jefferson"
(1975–1977), among others.
The office of Charles and Ray Eames, which functioned for
more than four decades (1943–88) at 901 Washington Boulevard in
Venice,
California, included in its staff, at one time or
another, a number of remarkable designers, like Henry Beer and
Richard Foy, now Co-chairmen
of CommArts, Inc., Don Albinson, Deborah Sussman,
Harry Bertoia, and Gregory Ain, who was Chief Engineer for the Eames'
during World War
II. Among the many important designs originating there
are the molded-plywood DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and DCM (Dining
Chair Metal
with a plywood seat) (1945), Eames Lounge Chair (1956),
the Aluminum Group furniture (1958) and as well as the Eames
Chaise (1968),
designed for Charles's friend, film director Billy
Wilder, the playful Do-Nothing Machine (1957), an early solar
energy experiment, and a
number of toys.
Short films produced by the couple often document their
interests in collecting toys and cultural artifacts on their
travels. The films
also record the process of hanging their exhibits or
producing classic furniture designs, to the purposefully mundane
topic of filming soap
suds moving over the pavement of a parking lot. Perhaps
their most popular movie, "Powers of Ten" (narrated by the late
physicist Philip
Morrison), gives a dramatic demonstration of orders of
magnitude by visually zooming away from the earth to the edge of
the universe, and
then microscopically zooming into the nucleus of a carbon
atom. Charles was a prolific photographer as well with thousands
of images
of their furniture, exhibits and collections, and now a
part of the Library of Congress.
Charles Eames died of a heart attack on August 21, 1978
while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Louis, and now
has a star on the
St. Louis Walk of Fame. Ray died 10 years later to the
exact day.
At the time of his death they were working on what became
their last production, the Eames Sofa which went into production
in 1984.
From the beginning, the Eames furniture has usually been
listed as by Charles Eames; indeed in the 1948 and 1952 Herman
Miller bound
catalogs, only Charles' name is listed, but it has become
clear that Ray was deeply involved and should be considered an
equal partner. The
Eames fabrics (many are currently available from Maharam)
were mostly designed by Ray, as were the Time Life Stools. But
in reading the
various books on Eames, and seeing the photos of
furniture development, it is clear that Ray's involvement is
absolute. |
