Charles Eames, Ray Eames. Eames House, Los Angeles, California. 1949. Plastic and wood, 20 × 84 × 30" (50.8 × 213.4 × 76.2 cm). Model maker: Derek Hamner. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Emilio Ambasz Fund

“Design is for living.”

Charles and Ray Eames

Everything was architecture to Charles and Ray Eames: the construction plans for a chair, the layout of an exhibition pavilion, the structure of a film, even the placement of silverware, plates, flowers, and objects on a dining table. Their home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles—known as Case Study House No. 8—bears witness to the blurring of boundaries between their personal and professional personas, with their iconic plywood designs, textiles, and photographs coexisting with family portraits, paintings, masks, and sculptures bought on travels around the world. The house served as the couple’s carefully designed showroom, too. Lined up on a shelf behind the couch in the living room, a file of magazines showed the couple’s celebrated plywood chairs on the covers. As historian Beatriz Colomina has observed, “All Eames architecture can be understood as set design.” And they designed it all: chairs, toys, houses, exhibitions, movies, and even orthopedic supports.1 “Design is for living,” they once said. “That’s what we do.”2

The Eameses’ personal and professional partnership began at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, when Ray-Bernice Alexandra Kaiser assisted Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen on their submission for MoMA’s Competition for Organic Design in Home Furnishings. Charles was the school’s head of Industrial Design; Ray, a student seeking to expand her creative toolkit. A painter at the time, Ray had contributed to the founding of the American Abstract Artists group. Charles and Ray married the following year, sparking a lifelong partnership. When asked about abandoning her painting career, Ray replied that “[she] never gave up painting, just changed [her] palette.”3

The Eameses’ prolific and multifaceted productions transformed North American consumers’ relationship with design, in a context marked by postwar manufacturing developments, a boom in domestic appliances, and the early stages of information design. At the core of their philosophy was an attempt to bring affordable design to the American household. The Eameses eagerly embraced novel materials and manufacturing techniques, experimenting with molded plywood, fiberglass, and plastics. The Eames Plywood Chair is a testament to their expertise in combining creativity with practicality, showcasing the transformative potential of materials in design.

Beyond their tangible creations, they also played a crucial role as cultural ambassadors of the US in the early Cold War years, notably through their installation at the 1959 American Exhibition in Moscow, centered around their film Glimpses of the USA. Through their fertile collaboration, the work of their office transitioned “from industrial to informational production, from furniture to film,” working for corporations such as Polaroid, IBM, and Boeing.4 With Powers of Ten (1977)—a cinematic journey from the microstructure of atoms in the human body to the entire universe—they achieved celebrity status.

The Eameses’ multifaceted approach to design remains fresh and captivating more than 60 years after their first designs appeared on the market. Their pursuit of innovation, coupled with an understanding of the interplay between utility and aesthetics, continues to shape our interaction with the world today.

Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, 2023

  1. Colomina, Beatriz. “Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture.” Grey Room 2 (2001): 6–29. https://doi.org/10.1162/152638101750172975.

  2. Neuhart, John, Marilyn Neuhart, and Ray Eames. Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Harry N. Abrams, 1989.

  3. ibid.

  4. Maffei, Nicolas. “The Work of Charles and Ray Eames.” Design Issues 15, no. 1 (1999): 75. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511789.

Wikipedia entry
Introduction
Charles Ormond Eames Jr. (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) was an American designer, architect and filmmaker. In professional partnership with his wife Ray-Bernice Kaiser Eames, he made groundbreaking contributions in the fields of architecture, furniture design, industrial design, manufacturing and the photographic arts.
Wikidata
Q170411
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Getty record
Introduction
American designer and architect; husband of designer Ray Eames.
Nationality
American
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Architect, Cinematographer, Designer
Names
Charles Eames, Charles Orman Eames
Ulan
500029567
Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License

Works

89 works online

Exhibitions

Publications

  • MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art Flexibound, 408 pages
  • MoMA Now: Highlights from The Museum of Modern Art—Ninetieth Anniversary Edition Hardcover, 424 pages
  • Art Making with MoMA: 20 Activities for Kids Inspired by Artists at The Museum of Modern Art Paperback, 128 pages
  • Charles Eames: Furniture from the Design Collection of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition catalogue, Paperback, pages
Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].