CHARLES AND RAY EAMES
Americans Ray and Charles Eames, a married couple, were both Industrial designers who were highly influential in modern architecture and furniture design.
Bernice Alexandra “Ray” Kaiser was born in 1912 in Sacramento, California. After graduating from the May Friend Bennett School in New York, where she pursued her interest in fashion design, Ray moved to New York City where she studied with the abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann. As a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, Ray’s paintings were exhibited in the first group show in 1937. In 1940, she began studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she expanded her artistic practice beyond the medium of painting and met Charles Eames, her future husband and lifelong design partner.
Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied architecture at Washington University, though he was dismissed from the program for his progressive ideology. During this time he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, who he married in 1929. Their daughter, Lucia Dewey Eames, was born a year later. Eames practiced architecture with his partner Robert Walsh, building a number of homes and churches in Missouri and Arkansas. Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen took note of Charles’ work, and invited him to pursue a fellowship at Cranbrook. Soon, Charles became the first director of the school’s industrial design program. During this time, he also became close friends with other architects and designers, among them Eero Saarinen.
The two designers met when Ray worked as an assistant for Charles and Eero Saarinen on their submission to MoMA’s “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition, for which they won two first prizes. In the summer of 1941 the couple married and relocated to Los Angeles where they settled in a Richard Neutra-designed apartment. During World War II they entered the field of plywood manufacturing, producing aircraft parts and leg splints with the help of a small staff and funded by the U.S. Navy. Out of these early collaborations they founded the Eames Office in Venice, California which they went on to operate from 1943–1988.
Over the ensuing four decades, the couple established themselves as some of the most influential industrial designers of the century, producing furniture, films, photography, exhibitions, and occasionally architecture. They were known for designing quality products with industrial or easily found materials, often iterating repeatedly until they were happy with the result. They designed their own home, Case Study House 8 alongside Eero Saarinen; the house is lauded to this day as a paradigm of modern architecture.
After Charles’ death in 1978 Ray continued operations at the Eames Office for a few years before closing the office and turning to sharing and preserving their decades of work. She donated 1.5 million objects to the Library of Congress, wrote, lectured, and welcomed tours to their house. Ray Eames died in 1988.
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