Charles and Ray Eames

By: Teresa Le


Introduction

Charles and Ray Eames are considered one of the greatest and most important designers of the 20th century. Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in America’s industrial heartland. He attended school in St. Louis and began to develop an interest in engineering and architecture. Charles Eames attended Washington University for two years on a scholarship, but was later dismissed due to his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. Following his expulsion from Washington University, he started working in an architectural office. He married his first wife Catherine Woermann in 1929 and had a daughter Lucia in 1930. In that same year, Charles Eames started his own architectural firm. He began to extend his design ideas beyond architecture and received a fellowship to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Charles later became head of the design department.

Ray Kaiser was born in Sacramento California in 1912. She showed fascination with the abstract qualities of ordinary objects early on. Ray Kaiser studied painting with Hans Hofmann in New York and later moved to Bloomfield, Michigan where she met Charles Eames. At Cranbrook Academy, Ray assisted Charles and Eero Saarinen in preparing designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s “Organic Furniture Competition.” In 1941, Charles divorced his wife and married Ray. They moved to California where they continued their furniture design work with molding plywood. The Eameses are best known for their contributions to architecture, furniture design, industrial design and manufacturing, exhibition design, film, and photography.

Architecture

"Modern architecture-- not a style. A philosophy of life." This is what Charles Eames believed. The Eameses did not design or build very many buildings. But of the ones they did, the most famous is their own home, The Eames House, officially known as Case Study House #8. The Eames’ residence was built as part of the architectural demonstration program organized in 1945 by John Entenza; the editor and publisher of the Los Angeles journal “Art & Architecture”. The Eameses had to restrict themselves to steel beams and columns standardized for assembly plants and obtainable from a firm of structural engineers, as materials was scarce so soon after the war. Charles Eames wanted to show how a timeless but wholly contemporary structure could be assembled from ready-made parts that would offer substantial savings over specially constructed elements, which can add enormously to the cost of building.

The house was a beautifully proportioned pair of simple paneled boxes. The rhythmic interplay of opaque, translucent, and transparent wall elements was reminiscent of classical Japanese architecture. The exterior’s monochromatic Modernist palette of black, white, and gray is enlivened by accents in the De Stijl Movement’s hallmark red and blue. But in place of the third primary color, Charles added a gold panel which resembles Japanese screens. The Eameses almost single handedly broke the Modernist taboo against drawing on the history of culture and reintroduced a density of detail not seen in architectural interiors since the Victorian Age.

Furniture Design

Between 1945 and 1978, more than forty major designs or ranges of designs for furniture by the Eameses went into commercial production. Charles and Ray Eames used multiple materials for their furniture such as plywood, plastic, or metal. A major theme of these designs is the development of plastic form, from the earliest plywood pieces in the 1940’s, to the fiberglass and wire mesh shells of the 1950’s and on to the flowing aluminum shapes of 1958. The majority of furniture production happened between 1945 and 1955, after which, date films and exhibitions took up more of the Eames’ time. Nevertheless, the period between 1956 and 1966 produced eleven major furniture projects including the Lounge Chair and Ottoman and the Aluminum Group (as seen below).

The Eameses are famous for their plywood furniture. However, the first of the Eames’ plywood pieces to be mass produced were not furniture but splints made for the Navy. They came up with the idea for lightweight molded plywood splints designed for easy transport and comfort because a friend of the Eameses expressed problems with the unhygienic metal splints.


The first mass produced plywood furniture began in the middle of 1945. Charles and Ray Eames designed stackable plywood chairs, tables, desks, and stools for children. They were produced and distributed by the Evans Products Company. The furniture was brightly stained in red, yellow, blue, and magenta. It was also promoted as easily cleaned and suitable for indoor or outdoor use. The tables were simple; formed from one piece of molded plywood. The chairs were formed out of two pieces of molded plywood, one serving as the legs and seat, and the other as the back.

Exhibitions

Charles and Ray Eames’ exhibitions were similar to their films. They recognized the limits of human attention spans and aimed to create a feeling of fun in their major exhibitions in order to maximize the impact of what they were trying to convey to the viewer. The Eames’ exhibitions were also very educational. They became a learning experience. Each exhibition was rigorously researched by staff members and outside experts. Photographic images were used to great effect as well as short films, objects, and interactive games. The Eameses fused their ideas about learning, illusion, toys, mathematics, science, technology, and new ways of seeing to produce exhibition.

Films and Photography

Between 1950 and 1982, Charles and Ray Eames made over 100 short films ranging from 1 to 30 minutes in length. They also made slide shows and multi-screen presentations. The Eameses won international acclaim as independent film makers with their first films to be shown in public. Most of the Eames’ films were made about issues or objects that had concerned them, as teaching tools, as records of exhibitions, or as parts of presentations. Charles and Ray approached filmmaking the same way they approached their design work. They put the same amount of research, quality, and attention to detail into their films. The most famous film made by Charles and Ray would be “Powers of Ten”. “Powers of Ten” has been chosen for the National Film Registry.

Photography was not merely a way to record things, but it was a part of the design process and part of the process of understanding furniture. But photography was not simply a matter of understanding furniture. It was a critical part of the Eames ethic. Charles often said that photography was a way of having your cake and eating it too. One had the pleasure of the experience, but also the pleasure of keeping and sharing that experience as well.

Conclusion

Charles and Ray Eames belonged to a generation of designers who before, during, and after World War II were determined to make the world a better place in which to live. The Eameses put much commitment and dedication into all their products. Their furniture, films, and exhibitions delighted the eye, the mind, and the spirit. Charles and Ray Eames have truly made an impact on their colleagues and designers that have come after them.





Bibliography

Filler, Martin Makers of Modern Architecture http://www.blogger.com/books.google.com/books?id=U2cciDigt3YC&pg=PA103&dq=Charles+and+Ray+Eames&as_brr=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false

www.eamesoffice.com/index2.php?mod=intro


www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/

Kirkham, Pat Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century http://books.google.com/books?id=JJGeC8kqrEUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0