EAMES a look into their world
EAMES a look into their world
EAMES
CREDITS Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, 1996 Pat Kirkham Published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Print. Eames: The Architect and the Painter, 2011 Bill Jersey and Jason Cohn Produced by Quest Productions and Bread and Butter Films, Film. LIFE Magazine: Charles and Ray Eames: Simply Genius, 1950 TIME & LIFE, Peter Stackpole, Getty Images Published by TIME & LIFE Herman Miller Collection, 1952 & 2014 Herman Miller, Inc. Published by Herman Miller Cranbrook Archives - Eames Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
EAMES: a look into their world Designed by Caitlyn Rebecca Lyle under instruction from Lian Ng, Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA, 2014. Reprint. Original text adapted from ‘Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century’ by Pat Kirkham. Originally published by THE MIT PRESS. All images and text are adapted from above credentials. Typography used includes Futura (originally designed by Paul Renner, 1927) and Avenir (originally designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1988)
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Published, printed, and bound by BLURB.com
Architecture
EAMES a look into their world
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“ The role of the designer is that of a very good and thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.” —Charles Eames
Ray and Charles with model of Mathematica exhibition, 1961.
CONTENTS 2 THE BEGINNING 12 FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS 24 FILM AND MULTIMEDIA 36 ARCHITECTURE 48 FURNITURE 60 THE LEGACY
EAMES Charles and Ray “pinned” by chair bases, 1947. 1
1 BEGINNING
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The Beginning
EAMES
“Take your pleasure seriously.” —Charles Eames
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The Beginning
THE BEGINNING Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988) met in Michigan at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1940, where she was a student and he was in charge of the Industrial Design department. Charles became a mentor to Ray as well as an ideal romantic interest. They had much in common, such as family lives and design interests, but had very diverse backgrounds.
Charles & Ray, California 1950s
Charles Ormand Eames was raised in St. Louis and often described himself as a “real Midwesterner.” Charles was the son of Charles Ormand Eames and Celine Lambert, who wed in 1901. The elder Charles was a military man who served during the Civil War and was unfortunately shot during his time in service. This unfortunate event allowed him to devote a great deal of time to his hobbies, including painting and photography. Young Charles took a great interest in his father’s hobbies at a young age. After his father’s death in 1921, Charles had a strong female presence in his life, including his mother, his sister, and his two aunts whom he lived with. He later quoted them as being “strong-minded” and speaking of them with affection and respect.
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Charles Eames with molded plywood chairs
The Beginning
CHARLES ORMAND EAMES
His career began as a laborer at the Laclede Steel Company in 1921. He had an impressive skillset of drawing and other practical skills which allowed him to be swiftly promoted to the engineering shop as a draftsman. This experience led to the conclusion that he wanted to pursue a career in Architecture. Charles attended Washington University and the summer of 1925, prior to his first semester, he worked at the Edwin F. Guth Fixture Company designing lighting fixtures. This job proved to be “an interesting transition from steel mill to architecture.” Throughout his years at Washington University, he was described by having great qualities of leadership and charisma. However, he was asked to leave in 1928 because of his general ‘non-conformity’. The next few years in Charles’ life included a marriage with Catherine Woermann (1929) who was training to be an architect and had her bachelors from Vassar. These years also included a growth in skills such as print making, lithography, engraving, and culture. Eames later joined a partnership with a man named Charles Gray, in which they were later joined by Walter Pauley. Although work was hard to find during the Depression in the United States, the jobs they did were obtained through connections and Charles’ interest in engineering and the arts. Working to build mainly British Domestic Revival homes that consisted of red and blue bricks with white painted gables, windows, and shutters. However, the Depression soon devastated the architectural and building trades and 85 percent of architects were unemployed by 1932. Once realizing how the Depression had affected himself and his peers, he sunk back and reevaluated his life and his career. He agreed that
“life should be based on doing rather than having.”
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RAY KAISER EAMES
EAMES
To the other part of the power couple, little is known about the early life of Ray Kiser Eames, when interviewed, she was highly guarded about that part of life. Often times, she felt as if Charles’ early career outshone her own, which may be why she was so hesitant to speak about her younger years. She undervalued her work and accomplishments prior to teaming up with Charles and creating designs together. From what we do know, however, is that she loved painting as a student. She was 28 years old when she met Charles, and their relationship was so powerful, both personally and professionally, that she regarded her life only as fully starting when they met. Ray Eames birth name was Bernice Alexandra Kaiser, born December 15, 1912. Raised in Sacramento by Alexander and Edna Burr Kaiser. “Ray” came from her childhood nickname of “Ray-Ray” which ultimately stuck as a simple “Ray.” Her parents were very protective of her as a child due to the loss of Ray’s elder sister who died a few months after Ray was born. In her early adult years, the culture of California expressing love and interest for the new affected the attitude of the young Ray Kaiser and led her to a passionate love for new forms of art, design, film, and dance. She remembers drawing as early as age three.
Ray Kaiser: Paper doll and clothing, early 1930s
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Ray graduated high school in 1931 and spent a term at Sacramento Junior College before packing up her things and moving to New York with her widowed mother, to be closer to her brother. She attended the May Friend Bennet School in Milbrook; a type of finishing school for young ladies. Once leaving in 1933, she knew that she wanted to continue developing her interest in modern art.
The Beginning
“ I never gave up on painting, I just changed my palette.” —Ray Eames
Ray Eames at home in California, 1950
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EAMES
“ Art resides in the quality of doing, process is not magic.” —Charles Eames
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The Beginning
By 1940, when Ray enrolled in classes at Cranbrook, she had been firmly committed to modernism and was in touch with all of the latest developments in painting and the world of sculpture. Ray was more avant-garde than Charles was when he entered Cranbrook in 1938. Charles’ whole way of thinking was completely transformed during his time at Cranbrook. Prior to his arrival, he was more traditional in his thinking and his design work. The Cranbrook emphasis on workshop activities and learning by doing greatly affected Charles’ way of thinking. For Ray, the stay at Cranbrook reinforced her Arts and Crafts notions of quality handwork and joy in labor. Ray painting, 1940s
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EAMES Ray and Charles, 1950s 9
The Beginning
Charles, however, was more versed in Arts and Craft ideas prior to coming to Cranbrook. He accepted the fellowship at Cranbrook so that he would have the time to read and reflect his own work without the pressure of having to make a living. He wanted to “live for a year in a library, in a sense. It was an attempt to make up what I had lost in the academic world.” He managed to read for about three months before he got involved in projects. Charles skills were so impressive, he was later appointed to be an Instructor of Design in the Intermediate School of Design by Eliel Saarinen. He did so well with that job that within a year he was promoted to being in charge of the entire department. Creating a relationship with Saarinen allowed for him to eventually work with Eliel and his son, Eero. The partnership between Eero and Charles would lay the foundation for the monumental work that Charles and Ray would produce.
Charles and Ray Eames in their studio, California
Through Eero, Charles gained much respect for modernism and the fine arts. He also gained an affinity for sculpture, which would eventually lead him to be in a position to appreciate Ray’s considerable talents in that area down the road.
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Eames Elephant, molded plywood
The Beginning
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FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS
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AN AFFECTION FOR OBJECTS
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The Eameses went above and beyond what was expected of designers. They shaped not only things but the way people think about things. Charles and Ray reinvented the object by presenting it in new and exciting ways. Particularly, they used toys and everyday objects to illustrate design principles and craft skills. They called these experiments “functioning decoration”. They shared a mutual delight and curiosity for the basic idea of an object and they took great pleasure in creating interesting and interactive objects; it was one of their main joys in life. The affinity for objects was rooted in the principles of Arts and Crafts and the ideals of truth to materiality, honest construction, joy in labor, and the dialectal relationship of beauty and utility. At the height of modernism’s hegemony it was difficult to admit simply liking the look of something, especially an object that could be classified as decorative, trivial, and ultimately non-industrial. The Eameses’ insistence on stressing the processes of design and manufacture of simple objects helped validate their delight in objects.
Functional Objects Animal Toys by Charles Eames, 1951
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EAMES “Solar Do-Nothing Machine”, 1957. 11
Functional Objects
“ Toys are not as innocent as they look. They are the preludes to serious ideas.” —Charles Eames
Toys were treated as seriously as any object by Charles and Ray Eames, whose delight in them related to their own sense of fun and to a belief in learning through play as well as to visual appreciation. To them, toys were vehicles for creative and expansive play that not only recalled childhood memories, but also offered adults opportunities to recreate their childhood and/or behave as if they were a child. Some toys were the by-product of other Eames designs. For instance, the molded plywood elephant came at the same time as the famous molded plywood furniture. Others filled a gap in the market for educationally progressive and visually stimulating toys.
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EAMES
The Eameses’ toys encouraged the expansion of the child’s mental and imaginative powers, and even some practical skills. During a time in which the idea of children possessing artistic ability was in bloom, the Eames designs were an integral part in the promotion of creativity at a young age. Early Eames functional object design, and debatably the most beautiful objects were masks for both children and adults. These reflected and interest in ritual, performance, and play as well as primitive and modern art. They grew out of the Eameses’ desire to facilitate free expression in children and to encourage it in the activities of adults. Charles and Ray’s fascination with masks related particularly to their love and appreciation of popular play traditions, entertainment, and celebratory aspects of which foregrounded the visual rather than the verbal. One of Charles’ most enduring love affairs was with the circus, an arena in which so many problems of communication seem to dissolve or be irrelevant. Charles was fascinated by the energy and discipline. Through him, Ray also became an enthusiast.
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In the 1940s, the duo almost auditioned for a spot in the circus as a clown act when a financial deal related to the production of their plywood furniture eased their worries enough to allow them to continue their work as designers. In addition to masks, the Eameses had an interest in face painting. What interested them was the idea of being able to transform the outer appearance and the suggested differences from a persons inside to the outward exterior that everyone sees.
Ray Eames with printed cat face from magazine, 1971
Functional Objects Charles Eames with printed face from magazine, 1971
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EAMES Superimposed Eames Elephant
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Functional Objects
The Eameses self-consciousness about construction is truly fascinating. They often posed for photographs or photographed themselves or others in the act of the photography or other processes. Similar to mask design, they were fascinated with superimposition and creating a distortion on the imagery. In 1950, the year in which they make their first toy film, the Eameses set aside their experiments with reflection and superimposition for a project that dealt with changing identity in a more direct and concrete way. Also going along the lines of transformation, they were interested in face painting due to the simplistic and more direct way to transform a person’s exterior. Specifically, Charles had been interested in clown makeup since the 1940s, if not earlier. In 1971, he and Ray made a film Clown Face. The symmetry of clown makeup was one of the things that interested them about it. On the other spectrum, the Eames toys were treated as seriously as any object by the Eameses whose delight in them related to their own sense of fun and to a belief in learning through play as well as to visual appreciation. To them, toys were vehicles for creative and expansive play that not only recalled childhood memories, but also offered adults opportunities to recreate their childhood and/or behave as a child. Some toys were the by-product of other Eames designs. For instance, the molded plywood elephant came at the same time as the famous molded plywood furniture. Others filled a gap in the market for educationally progressive and visually stimulating functional objects.
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EAMES
Ray Eames with early prototype of The Toy 1951.
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Functional Objects
ACTIVE PARTICIPATION
The Eameses mask production struck an interest with a Tennessee toy firm, Tigrett Enterprises. In the end, the project never got beyond the vibrantly colored cardboard prototypes. Although the masks were not produced commercially did not dampen the interest of either Tigrett Enterprises or the Eameses; another self-assembly project, The Toy (1951), went into production and was sold through the Sears catalog. More modern in concept and form than the masks, this constructional toy was aimed mainly but not exclusively at children. The kit comprised dowels, pipe cleaners, and brightly colored panels of plasticcoated, moisture-resistant stiff paper, which could be used to make a variety of structures, including play houses and puppet theaters. This and other constructional toys designed by the Eameses required active participation, it was the child who decided the final shape and form.
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EAMES Ray and Charles, 1950s. 11
Film and Multimedia
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FILM AND MULTIMEDIA
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AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATING
EAMES 26
Charles and Ray Eames won international acclaim as independent film-makers. By 1978, the Eameses had made more than eighty short films, many of which had been praised for their visual beauty and intellectual stimulation; however, they still found it difficult to view themselves as filmmakers, because, in the main, they made films as a means of communicating ideas rather than for entertainment of creative expression. Most of their films were made about issues or objects that had long concerned them, as teaching tools, as records of exhibitions, or as parts of presentations. Charles and Ray approached their design work, putting the same depth of research, insistence on quality, and attention to detail into the shortest of films as into any other project. The film medium appealed to their preference for working in a disciplined manner within tight constraints and offered them an outlet for exploring relationships between scripts and visual material. Falling partly into but largely between the categories of “experimental” and “business” films, Eames films do not fit neatly into any one category or genre. Charles and Ray Eames were a part of the cultural developments of Postwar America and the free experimental spirit of the 1960s. Their design work influenced these developments.
Film and Multimedia Glimpse of the USA. Multi-screen presentation, Moscow, 1959.
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EAMES Charles and Ray working on Genetics Great and Small, 1977.
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Film and Multimedia
Both Charles and Ray had long been interested in film and photography. Ray had been a film enthusiast since her days as a student, and Charles had been fascinated by photography since his boyhood. Charles had spent a great deal of time documenting objects in photographs since 1942. Ray was later quoted saying, “Charles would never take a shot simply as a record...just to document a piece. He would only take it if he got the photograph looking right, looking as he wanted it.” Charles became fascinated with color film and especially transparencies, in which he used to explore in great detail. Within the partnership, he was definitely the one in charge of photography, although the actual images often owed a great deal to Ray. To describe the Eameses’ interest in photography as an obsession is not an exaggeration; the Library of Congress now holds approximately 750,000 images (mainly slides) from the Eames Office. Friends and colleagues love to tell how, when hearing an interesting or amusing story, Charles would always ask “Did you get a picture?”
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EAMES
It is difficult to pinpoint particular stylistic influences in the Eameses’ films. Unlike many other architects and designers, they did not simply use the camera to explore space; indeed, even when looking at architecture, their films are remarkable unconcerned with space. They took influence from German, Russian, and French avant-garde films and some touches of Fischinger. Norman McLaren was more of an influence than Fischinger, he knew the Eameses and admired their work. Features of Eames work reminiscent of McLaren include similar looks achieve through lighting and film quality, varied animation techniques mixed with other forms of filmmaking, and the use of nonprofessional actors to give a stylized feel to certain scenes. Otherwise, however, the similarities between McLaren’s film and the Eameses’ are loose rather than specific and appear to have arisen out of thinking and working along similar lines under similar influences. From the late 1940s on the Eameses and McLaren shared a liberal bourgeois internationalist outlook which found expression in some of their film, and McLaren spent time in India in the 1950s. Other shared interests included the relationship of the visuals to sound, the conveying of the thought by means of film, the zoom lens, and multiple optics.
Charles and Ray Eames leaving Los Angeles for American National Exhibition, 1959.
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Film and Multimedia Charles Eames behind camera, at Cranbrook Academy, 1941.
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EAMES
Charles Eames with his Solar Toy, 1957
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Film and Multimedia
The Eameses’ films owed at least as much to their own aesthetic sensibilities, particularly Ray’s collage and decorating skills, Charles’s ability to handle ideas as well as a camera, and their mutual concerns with structure, images, and connections between images and ideas. They saw themselves as artisans as much as artists even though the latter word was one they often used to describe architects, philosophers, and scientists as well as painters, designers and filmmakers. They were defined as “Renaissance” people, and their films reflect their broad range of interests and their seemingly never ending wealth of creative ideas.
Think. Multi-screen presentation, IBM, NY World’s Fair, 1964-65.
Besides being members of an independent filmmaking fraternity, Charles and Ray made sponsored films in conjunction with their innovative films they produced on their own accord. The sponsors were sometimes educational or cultural instructions, but the majority of the clients were from big business or industry. By the 1960s sponsored films formed a substantial part of American filmmaking, particularly in terms of the numbers of films made and viewed. Today it is easy to forget just what a remarkable commercial, and sometimes artistic, phenomenon this was. Large corporations, small family firms, museums, charitable organizations, and the United States government all turned to film, whether to offer communication about the attractions of a product or the essence of an ideology.
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EAMES
Still from the film ‘Powers of Ten’ by Ray and Charles Eames, 1968
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Film and Multimedia
POWERS OF TEN Powers of Ten (1968) was one of the most well-known of the Eames films and it was, and still is often used as a teaching aid in many schools and science museums. Meant to appeal to an interested ten year old, as well as to a specialist, this film had to convey a complex, theoretical way of viewing the world in a very simple manner. The aim was to convey a “gut feeling” about the new physics and particularly about relative dimensions in time and space. One comes away from this film feeling as if one has had a physical as well as intellectual experience. Using a continuous zoom, the film takes the viewer out from Earth to the farthest known point in space and then back to the nucleus of a carbon atom while chronometers on a split screen register distance traveled at the rate of one power of ten every ten seconds. The dashboard of clocks gives the film “a strong but not imposing theoretical framework” by which viewers can orient themselves and see how fast they are going. Philip Morrison likened the sensation to
“being like a driver in a spaceship.”
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EAMES Exterior view of Eames House
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The Beginning
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ARCHITECTURE
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EAMES
So much attention has been directed towards the Eameses’ house in Pacific Palisades that other buildings have not been paid the attention that they deserve. Although they were much more involved in product design and other activities after 1950, the Eameses retained a great interest in the world of architecture. Charles continued to refer to himself as an architect rather than a designer. He always claimed that he did so in order to emphasize his concern with structure, and there is no reason to doubt that, but it was also something of an affectation in a world where the profession of architect had more cachet than that of an industrial designer. When asked if he had an objection to the word ‘designer’, Charles replied: “It is not that I’m embarrassed about ‘designer’ so much as the degree to which I prefer the word ‘architect’ and what it implies. It implies structure, a kind of analysis, as well as a kind of tradition behind it.” Charles and Ray at home, 1970
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According to Charles, Ray also had a strong understanding of structure, although she did not have all of his technical knowledge. Ray tried to avoid labeling herself. When the tag of the fine arts trained wife who worked with her more famous husband was imposed on her, she partly resisted it and partly colluded in it. Her role in relation to interior decoration has been more widely acknowledged than her role in the joint architectural work.
Architecture Interior of Eames Home, 1950
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EAMES
THE CASE STUDY HOUSE PROGRAM The Eames House was built as a part of the Case Study House Program, a postwar experiment to develop high-quality homes which was organized by John Entenza and publicized in Arts & Architecture. During the war the question of the nature of housing was an important part of wider debates on postwar reconstruction.
House at Levittown, NY, 1950. Levitt and Sons.
The Case Study House Program was one outcome of those debates, and one of the most technologically and aesthetically advanced. Most architects agreed that use should be made of new materials and technology, but to some this meant little more than air conditioning, easy-to-clean surfaces, and so-called labor saving devices in traditional style homes. One of the most commercially successful of the postwar house models was Levitt and Sons “Cape Codder.” The basic Levitt home sold for as little as $5,000. When the Eameses designed a low-cost prefabricated house for a family with two children in 1951, a project that unfortunately never came to fruition, they worked to an estimated cost of $8,000. Although the program appealed mainly to affluent members of the intelligentsia with an interest in contemporary art and design, not all modernist house design focused so exclusively on wealthy clients or on that of single-family home dwellings. Early modernist architecture was intensely concerned with social conditions and with the lot of ordinary people, the greatest manifestation of which was the model workers’ housing shown at numerous exhibitions in Europe during the interwar years. Many American architects, including Charles Eames, were aware of these developments, but this utopian aspect of modernism was considerably weaker in the United States, partly because of the comparative underdevelopment of the American labor and socialist movements and partly because of a campaign against “un-American” state-funded mass housing.
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Architecture
Charles Eames was involved in designing two Case Study houses: his own and that of John Entenza, which share a site in Pacific Palisades. The Eames House was designed in collaboration with Ray and the Entenza House with Eero Saarinen. Less than 200 yards apart, they are separated by a plant covered mound created to form a more natural barrier for the sake of privacy. Although the houses share a site and architect, they differ in form. The Eames structure is an open structure with infill panels; the Entenza House conceals its structure and emphasizes the horizontal. It has been said that they are “technological twins but architectural opposites... a tenuous web... and a solid shell.� The Eames House is a tall construction through which space is permitted to flow in three dimensions, the Entenza House is a flat metal box with a distinctly horizontal flow of space inside, strictly controlled by free-standing screens and partitions. Many of the differences are attributable to the fact that in one case, Charles worked with Eero Saarinen for a client whereas the other building was designed in collaboration with his wife and was their own.
Briefs and first designs for Eames House and Entenza House, Arts & Architecture, 1945.
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EAMES Revised plan of Eames House, drawn by both Ray and Charles, 1947.
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Architecture
EAMES HOUSE REDESIGN
The idea of separate living and working spaces came from the Eameses themselves and was retained when the house was completely redesigned by Charles and Ray between 1947 and 1949. It was not until they collaborated on the redesign that the plywood furniture that Charles had previously developed with Saarinen took on lighter and more harmonious form, and a comparison of the two versions of the Eames House with the Entenza House leaves no doubt that, despite the massive talents of Saarinen as an architect and designer, Charles and Ray proved a more creative partnership in the Case Study Program. Charles was generally cited as the designer of the Eames House as built, but this was a definitely a joint effort between the two. This is not to say that there was always 50-50 collaboration at every stage. Charles’ interest in architecture and engineering in steel structures meant that he took the responsibility for the constructional elements, and Ray stated that Charles’ concern that the design did not justify the cost of the steel was the main impetus behind the redesign of the house after the materials had been delivered to the site.
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EAMES
Whereas the original design was a minimum volume house which used a lot of steel, the new version aimed at maximum volume from minimum materials. Space was a key consideration for the Eameses, who regarded it as more important than a swimming pool or garage. Steel was chosen for its relative cheap cost as well as its lightness and overall strength. The structural shell was raised by five men in 16 hours, and the roof deck was completed by one man in three days.
Ray Eames at home, 1950.
As for the positioning of the house, the site was the deciding factor. The Eames were shocked and could not believe their luck with Entenza first offered them a share of the site at Pacific Palisades. The large expanse of meadow, one boundary of which overlooked the ocean, offered privacy and tranquility in one of the world’s largest and noisiest cities and was conveniently located for their Venice workshop as well as their group of friends in Hollywood and Santa Monica. The retention of the open meadow was to be one of the great features and pleasures of the location. As Ray later put it: “It is wonderful to see all the changing seasons in it, even in Southern California. In July is it yellow and dry whereas in spring it is high and full of flowers. We cut it only once a year, in late May or June.”
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Architecture Eames House, 1950.
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EAMES
Charles and Ray Eames with John Entenza
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Charles Eames and John Entenza sketches and plans for a new construction, 1952.
Architecture
Throughout their architectural career, Charles and Ray completed a wide variety of projects including, but not limited to, the Herman Miller Furniture Company Showroom in Los Angeles (1948), the Max de Pree House in Michigan (1954), the Griffith Park Railroad Station in Los Angeles (1957), and much more. They also undertook a list on unrealized architectural projects. In 1943, Charles Eames accepted the invitation of Architectural Forum to submit designs for public buildings suitable for the postwar period. The submission for a City Hall complex was cited under both Charles Eames and John Entenza, but was published under Charles’ name alone. The brilliant sketches and the lucid texts were completed within a few days and this, together with Ray’s heavy involvement in the plywood work for the U.S. Navy and her lack of experience in architectural projects, probably accounts for her lack of input. This project was a magnificent opportunity to move away from the monumental historical styles that still dominated public architecture, but the entry went even further and developed what was the first of many proposed “information centers.” This design also indicates that Charles’s deep concern with communication, normally said to begin around 1950, dates back to at least as far as this project. A desire for greater communication between local government and the people was articulated in the accompanying text, which began by pointing out that in 1943 in a typical small American community only a small percentage of those registered actually bothered to vote in a municipal election and argued that government should been seen as something more than a group of administrators. The design brought together various departments of local government in an attempt to link them for the better functioning of society “...it should be impossible to think in terms of the juvenile court without thinking in terms of a Board of Education.”
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Furniture
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FURNITURE
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EAMES
MOLDED PLYWOOD OBJECTS
Eames and Saarinen’s molded plywood chairs, MoMA, 1940.
The story of Eames furniture begins with Charles Eames and Eeron Saarinen at Cranbrook in 1938. By that date a considerable amount of plywood furniture was being commercially produced in the United States. There had been more than a decade of sustained and systematic experimentation with and production of plywood furniture, both molded and cut out, by many of the leading designers of that era. The challenge that excited Eames and Saarinen the most was the shaping of the plywood in more than one dimension, as opposed to more than one direction. The idea of a comfortable molded plywood chair without upholstery was well established, therefore, by the time Eames and Saarinen set about taking compound molding through to the mass-production stage. Eames and Saarinen went through a serious of trials and errors with the production and manufacturing of the molded plywood furniture pieces. By the time Charles and Ray left Cranbrook, it was clear that much work remained to be done before the successful outcome of mass-produced, non-upholstered, compound curved plywood furniture at low prices would be possible.
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Furniture Charles Eames at Cranbrook Academy, 1940.
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EAMES
Kazam Machine in workshop of Eames’ apartment, 1941.
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Furniture
“ The connections, the connections, the connections. It will be these details that give the product its life.” —Charles Eames
Charles and Ray eventually produced an unflawed one-piece compound curve chair using their homemade “Kazam” machine, in which a membrane inflated by a bicycle pump pushed glued plies against an electronically heated plaster mold. Although the results were often good, the process took about four to six hours and hand finishing was still required. Due to a partnership and an investment by John Entenza, Charles and Ray were able to establish their own workshop. The first of the Eameses’ plywood pieces to be mass produced were not furniture but splints made for the Navy. The idea for lightweight molded-plywood splints designed for comfort and easy transportation came after a medical friend of the Eameses detailed some of the problems caused by unhygienic metal splints. The military contract gave access to classified information, including the latest Allied developments in synthetic glues and plywood production. While working on the military contract, Ray (and to the lesser extent, Charles) used the improved glues and molding machinery to produce sculptures of complex shapes, ranging from coils and springs to highly abstract forms. Experimentation in both plywood and plastic form and the experience gained from the large-scale production of the splints stood the Eames in good stead for their post war ventures into mass-produces plywood objects.
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EAMES
The plywood furniture for adults proved to be the major breakthrough in the mass production of complex molded plywood furniture. In 1946, MoMA hosted it’s first one man furniture exhibition, New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames, which featured the plywood pieces designed and developed by Charles and Ray between the years 1941 and 1946. The presence of Eames furniture in exhibitions such as this was a notable factor to their increased popularity. There is no doubt that the MoMA seal of approval helped sell products, particularly those that were radically new in design and construction. The end of this particularly fertile period of the Eameses careers was also marked by the dissolution of the Molded Plywood Division of the Evans Products Company and the beginning of a long and beneficial working relationship between both the Eameses and the Herman Miller Furniture Company. Herman Miller began marketing the Eames’ plywood furniture in 1946. Billed as “not only the most advanced part of the Herman Miller collection, but the most advanced furniture being produced in the world today,” it was featured prominently in the 1948 catalog.
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Furniture Herman Miller Catalog, 1952. 55
EAMES
PLASTIC AND WIRE FORMS Once the plywood project of the mid 1940s have been seen through to a successful conclusion, Charles Eames decided that the time was ripe to pursue other materials and methods of mass producing furniture. They experimented with metals, but in the end, they reconsidered plastics, which were much lighter than steel or aluminum and more malleable than plywood. Although the Eameses were not the first furniture designers to work in plastic, their designs proved among the most popular in this medium. Polyester plastic reinforced with fiberglass, developed during the war by the U.S. Air Force, was perceived as a wonder material that “could do damned near anything.” The Eames continued with a number of successful plastic furniture series, and soon ventured back into the idea of the use of metals. Charles and Ray successfully adapted the shell form to bent wire. They were fascinated by the proliferation of ordinary objects produced in wire in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
“If you looked around, you found these fantastic things being made of wire. We looked into it and found that it was a good production technique and also a good use of material.”
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Furniture Eames Molded Plastic Arm Chair, 1950.
Eames Wire Chair,1952.
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EAMES
Charles Eames inspecting Aluminum Group bases, 1958.
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Furniture
EAMES ALUMINUM GROUP The next major development was the Aluminum Group. Designed in 1958, the aluminum chair was the most complex of the Eames’ chairs to manufacture, due to the sand-casting process and the degree of hand fashioning that was involved. The group marked a shift away from shell forms of the 1950s while retaining their lightness, elegance, and minimalism. The Aluminum Group consisted of large and small lounge chairs, a dining chair, an ottoman, and dining and coffee tables with tops of slate, clear glass, or marble. Engineered to withstand pool side or patio wear and weathering, yet styled to harmonize with the plushest contemporary interests. The group was popular with the more artistic strata of the wealthy professional classes, but it was rarely bought for outdoor use; it was simply too expensive for that. Never cheap, the Aluminum Group furniture ended up in offices and to better meet those office requirements, two swivel chairs were introduced in the mid 1960s.
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The Legacy
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THE LEGACY
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The work of Ray and Charles Eames was often very innovative, although they always insisted that designers should innovate only as a last resort. They reveled in the particular constraints of specific briefs and in the rationalistic search for the best possible solution to the problem at hand, yet they produced work that has been described as poetic. In their passion to convey their enthusiasm to others, the Eameses “shaped not only things but the way people think about things.� Their films, exhibitions, and multi-screen presentations show them to have been at the forefront of new thinking about the more effective and pleasurable ways of communicating knowledge to large numbers of people. Their many exhibitions and multiple image shows reached large and largely appreciated audiences. Their design work was respected by the cognoscenti and, at the same time, popular in the sense of being seen, used, enjoyed, and admired by many. In this they achieved the modernist designer’s dream of enriching the lives of ordinary people with quality objects produced by means of the most up to date technology. Ray and Charles genuinely cared about how their products would interact and influence the public. No matter what the source of inspiration was to the power couple, the end result was invariably distinctive and informed by a concern with structure. Despite this there was not a single aesthetic formula that related to every area of their work. Their buildings and many of their furniture pieces were minimalist, yet their other areas of design and productivity drew on juxtaposition, addition, fragmentation, and many other intriguing and interesting design approaches.
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Ray and Charles, 1941.
The Legacy
“ What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good, lasts.” —Ray Eames
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Charles Eames design process venn-diagram, 1969.
The Legacy
A DESIGN LEGACY
Eames products were part of a shift in postwar American taste toward favoring organic over geometric forms, and they found success at a time when modernist design was broadening from a movement with aspirations toward the monolithic to a pluralism in which alternative aesthetics coexisted more or less happily. The Eameses exclusive insistence on a machine aesthetic, which they only used when and where it suited them. The Cranbrook experience was crucial to their joint work; it validated the eclecticism inherent in Charles’ earlier designs while extending his understanding and knowledge of International Style architecture, as well as tempered Ray’s more purist modernism. For every designer who was influenced by the Eameses in terms of style, there were others who drew strength from their commitments to design as a problem-solving exercise, to quality at every level, and to engagement with a wide range of activities, issues and commercial contexts. Their indirect influence was felt in a variety of other countries through design teachers who took them and their methods as models.
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LASTING PARTNERSHIPS One of the Eames’ mantras was “to get the most of the best to the most for the least.” Their certainty about their position, their dedication to rigourous research, and their reputation as the people who had finally made low cost, mass produced, modernist furniture widely available enabled them to introduce “prettiness” to their designs and products. Before the low cost was introduced, pretty things were described as unnecessary. Adding elements like this allowed for the Eameses to introduce a mix of playful and serious and add a bit of personality and flair to their designs. A significant part of the Eames success is the way they were able to start and maintain lasting partnerships. Commercial success, for them came from the joint effort between them and Herman Miller. Today, Herman Miller is still their manufacturer and continues to keep their memory alive by celebrating their phenomenal collection.
Herman Miller Furniture Company catalog, 1950s
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The Legacy Herman Miller Furniture Company catalog, 2014 67
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As for their personal partnership, it has been said that Ray lived in Charles’ shadow, although she was a great and vital contributor to their multifaceted design projects. Generally, their partnership was an easy one, they never failed to give each other the credit that they deserved and they each had an enormous amount of admiration for each others vast list of abilities. Ray’s relinquishing fine art and graphics and working collaboratively with Charles meant that they avoided a competitive situation of two individual artists living together and having to negotiate separate and sometimes fluctual reputations based on their personal creations. Within the design collaboration between Charles and Ray, the differences in their training and areas of expertise at least meant that there was never the possibility of her being considered a pale imitator of her husband. However, as it was, Ray had to contend with the face that her contributions to joint projects sometimes went unrecognized, which sometimes left her frustrated although she adored her husband and she never wished him less glory than he received. Charles was quick to give Ray the credit she most certainly deserved by always saying,
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“Anything I can do, she can do better.”
The Legacy Ray and Charles, 1941.
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Charles and Ray at home, 1950.
The Legacy
Today, the Eames are remembered as innovators and designers that pushed past the threshold of what was thought to be possible at the time. Their designs remain timeless and still very adaptable to today’s society. The Eameses were educators and communicators and they believed that most people had talents and gifts within them which would flourish if nurtured. In contrast with the idea of a gifted few, they believed “just in people doing things they are really interested in doing.� Their boundless energy, spirit of independent inquiry, joy of life, and their commitments to education and quality in all things, as well as the exploration of the possibilities of new ways of seeing and experiencing life were, and still remain, truly inspiring.
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ISBN PLACEHOLDER
BLURB.com, 2014