CHARLES AND RAY BIOGRAPHY
Charles Eames (1907-78)
and Ray Eames (1912-88) gave shape to America's twentieth
century. Their lives and work represented the nation's
defining movements: the West Coast's coming-of-age, the
economy's shift from making goods to producing information,
and the global expansion of American culture. The Eameses
embraced the era's visionary concept of modern design
as an agent of social change, elevating it to a national
agenda. Their evolution from furniture designers to cultural
ambassadors demonstrated their boundless talents and the
overlap of their interests with those of their country.
In a rare era of shared objectives, the Eameses partnered
with the federal government and the country's top businesses
to lead the charge to modernize postwar America.
|
Ray and Charles Working on
a Conceptual Model for the Exhibition Mathematica,
1960, photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-22a)
|
Born in St. Louis, Missouri,
Charles Eames grew up in America's industrial heartland. As
a young man he worked for engineers and manufacturers, anticipating
his lifelong interest in mechanics and the complex working of
things. Ray Kaiser, born in Sacramento, California, demonstrated
her fascination with the abstract qualities of ordinary objects
early on. She spent her formative years in the orbit of New
York's modern art movements and participated in the first wave
of American-born abstract artists.
Arts
& Architecture Covers Designed by Ray, 1942-44,
reproductions.
Manuscript Division (A-08)
Additional covers:
three - four
- five - six
seven - eight
- nine
ten - eleven
- twelve
|
Ray's abstract cover designs for Arts & Architecture
magazine signified the Los Angeles-based magazine's commitment
to avant-garde art, architecture, music, and film.
|
Ray and Charles Working on
a Conceptual Model for the Exhibition Mathematica,
1960, photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-22a)
|
Designed for the California Museum of Science
and Industry in Los Angeles, Mathematica was the first of
many major science exhibitions produced by the Eames Office.
|
From 1943 to 1988, the Eames Office was located in a
renovated garage at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice,
then an industrial section of Los Angeles.
|
Charles's Office,
1976, photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-23)
|
Charles's Office,
1976, photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-23)
|
From 1943 to 1988, the Eames Office was located in a
renovated garage at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice,
then an industrial section of Los Angeles.
|
For the Eameses, the design process would be successful
only by identifying the overlapping needs of client, society,
and designer and developing products that would serve
all three.
|
Diagram by Charles
Displayed in the 1969 Exhibition
Qu'est-ce Que Le Design?
(What is Design?)
at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris,
photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-20)
|
Dot Pattern fabric design by
Ray,
circa 1947,
pencil on tracing paper
Prints & Photographs Division (A-12)
|
Like Ray's magazine covers, her textile designs translated
abstract art into useful, everyday objects. Dot Pattern
was never commercially produced.
|
First submitted to a competition at New York's Museum
of Modern Art in 1947, Crosspatch was then commercially
produced by Schiffer Prints.
|
Crosspatch Fabric Design by
Ray,
1945, photographic reproduction.
Prints & Photographs Division (A-10r)
|
Letter from Charles (With
Draft by Ray)
to Henry Ford II, August 26, 1954,
handwritten and typed letters.
Page 2
Lent by Lucia Eames (A-39a-b)
|
The Eameses' correspondence with Henry Ford urged him
to make "standard production models" and demonstrated
their confidence that industry and designers could collaborate
to produce beautiful, mass-produced goods.
|
"A Sample Lesson," an experimental, multimedia course
presented at the University of Georgia and then at UCLA,
sought to break down the barriers of the typical university
curriculum in order to de-compart-mentalize students'
thinking and create free and intuitive learners.
|
Invitation to "A Sample Lesson"
at the
University of California, Los Angeles, 1953,
printed paper.
Page 2 - Page
3
Lent by Lucia Eames (A-46)
|
Pages from Charles's Proposal
for
an Exhibition about Computers
at
IBM's Headquarters in Armonk, New York,
August 1967,
pencil and ink on paper with typed text.
Manuscript Division
(A-33)
|
Beginning with the film The Information Machine in 1957,
the Eameses helped IBM make science and technology accessible
to lay people through a series of more than 50 films,
exhibitions, and books.
|
Charles became one of the country's leading cultural
diplomats, helping to shape arts-related programs through
his service on various councils. The National Council
on the Arts is the advisory board of the National Endowment
for the Arts.
|
Charles's Notes from a
National Council on the Arts
Meeting, 1971,
handwritten document on paper.
Manuscript Division (A-48)
|
Lithograph by Ray and Exhibition
Portfolio Title Sheet, 1937,
lithograph.
Manuscript Division (A-14a-b)
|
Published in conjunction with an American Abstract Artists
exhibition in New York, Ray's work was included in this
show, which was organized by an important group of modern
artists.
|
Letter Sent by Charles from
Moscow
to His Daughter, Lucia, and her Family,
1959, photographic reproduction.
Courtesy the Eames Family
(A-18)
|
President Richard Nixon, Charles,
and Nancy Hanks of the National Endowment
for the Arts at the White House,
1973, photograph.
Manuscript Division
(A-47)
|
Charles's Notes for a Lecture,
circa 1974, pencil on paper.
Manuscript Division (A-34)
|
Charles's Notes from a National
Council on the Arts Meeting, 1973,
handwritten notes on paper.
Manuscript Division (A-49)
|
Fashion Drawings by Ray,
1930s, various media on paper.
Additional drawings: two
- three
Prints & Photographs Division (A-06)
|
Christmas and New Year's Card
Design by Ray,
1933-34, pencil on paper.
Prints & Photographs Division (A-5)
|
Christmas and New Year's Card
Design by Ray,
1933-34, photographic reproduction.
Prints & Photographs Division (A-4r)
|
Prints of European Cities by
Charles
Based on 1929 Travel Sketches,
lithographs.
Lent by Lucia Eames (A-17)
|
Charles and Ray met at
the Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit in 1940. Cranbrook's
holistic design approach and its creed of better living through
better design shaped their sensibilities and their shared agenda.
They married in 1941 and joined the westward migration to Los
Angeles as the city was gearing up for World War II. Wartime
experiments with new materials and technologies inspired the
Eameses' low-cost furniture for Herman Miller and later housing
designs and demonstrated expanded ways for designers to work
with industry. The Eameses also developed new partnerships with
universities and government agencies, as their interests expanded
beyond the design of objects.
Announcement for
Hans Hofmann's School,
1933 printed document.
Page 2
Manuscript Division (A-13)
|
In the 1930s Ray exhibited her paintings and studied
with Hofmann, one of the decade's most important teachers
and painters.
|
The WPA was a New Deal model of the activist, culturally
beneficent government that would support the Eameses'
postwar projects.
|
Charles (Center) Working for
the
Historic American Buildings Survey,
Missouri, 1934, a Works Progress Administration (WPA)
project,
photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-31)
|
Meyer House, Huntleigh Village,
Missouri,
designed by Charles
with Robert Walsh,
1936-38, photograph.
(A-43)
|
Charles studied architecture for two years at Washington
University and later opened an architectural office with
Walsh. Their Meyer House combined modern design and elegant
materials -- hallmarks of Charles and Ray's own home built
in Los Angeles in 1949.
|
The design's rectangular volumes and glass walls anticipate
the Eameses' 1949 house in Los Angeles.
|
Sketch by Charles of a Studio,
circa 1940, pencil on paper.
Lent by Cranbrook Art Museum (A-38)
|
Charles's diagram for
"What is a House?"
an article published in
Arts & Architecture, July 1944 (A-42)
|
Co-authors Eames and John Entenza advocated innovative
uses of wartime materials and technologies, as well as
collaborations with sociologists, economists, and scientists,
to solve the housing shortage.
|
Charles (Center) in Cranbrook
Studio,
1940, photograph.
Courtesy Cranbrook Archives (A-19a)
|
George Booth, Cranbrook Founder
with Charles,
1939, photograph.
Courtesy Cranbrook Archives (A-19b)
|
|
Charles at
Cranbrook,
1940, photograph.
Courtesy Cranbrook Archives (A-19c)
|
At Cranbrook, Charles was a design instructor from 1939
to 1940. Ray studied weaving, ceramics, and metalwork
in 1941.
|
Sketches and Notes by Ray of
Ringling Brothers Circus Acts
at New York's Madison Square Garden,
1938, pencil on paper. Page
2 - Page 3
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-7b-d)
|
Stationery, probably designed
by Ray,
before 1941.
Prints & Photographs Division (A-21a,b)
|
|
U.S. Post
Office, St. Louis, Missouri,
by Charles, 1931,
etching on paper.
Lent by Lucia Eames (A-51)
|
Ray with Cat Mask,
1971, photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-1)
|
Charles with Clown Mask,
1977, photograph.
Prints & Photographs
Division (A-16)
|
|