THE DR AG AND E AMES LA PASTLIVES
Beck y Yang Rachel Surnow Theresa Lee Amy Woo
By Keasha Palmer MARCH 22, 2010
AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES EAMES
A wonderful, photo-filled coffee table book, Eames Design; The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, includes a 1969 Q & A session with Charles Eames and Madame L’Amic of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, in conjunction with a design exhibit at the Louvre.
19 8 0 J U LY 2 8 - AU G . 2 0
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH RAY EAMES
RUTH BOWMAN: I have come here on a Monday afternoon and interrupted your day to talk with you a little bit about the past, which I guess is partly on your mind now anyway, because all of the things that you are doing are bringing the past up to the present.
“Eventually everything conn
nects
— people, ideas, objects.” - Charles Eames
Here are a few choice tidbits from that session (which, by the way, was later used as the audio track for a film the Eames Office made on the design process called, “Design Q&A�).
RAY KAISER EAMES: Yes, more or less.
Q: What is your definition of design? A: A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose. Q: What are the boundaries of design? A: What are the boundaries of problems? Q: Does the creation of design admit constraint? A: Design depends largely on constraints. Q: What constraints? A: The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible (and) his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, size, strength, balance, surface, time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list. Q: To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number (the masses)? The specialists‌the enlightened amateur‌a privileged social class? A: To the need.
RUTH BOWMAN: I was interested in reading through the material I’ve collected through the years about you and Charles to see that there was a long history, from 1907 to 1940, of Charles, and then you appear in the biographical material in 1940. Is that when you met him? RAY KAISER EAMES: Yes, 1940, at Cranbrook. RUTH BOWMAN: You were at Cranbrook! RAY KAISER EAMES: I was at Cranbrook for a very short time. I realize it didn’t . . . I only realized it the other day when I went back and everyone was expecting to hear a great deal about Cranbrook, and I counted the days, and there were not very many. But I had gone there in 1940 on my way to California because a dear friend had been there and thought it was a good idea, as I was talking. I was coming out here to build a house. My mother had died, and I had been in New York for many years and thought it was time that I came back to California.
“I never gave up painting, I just changed my palette.” - Ray Eames
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