Ray and Charles Eames

Artist domain

Article

No. 10 • June 2018

On the California coast, the rooms of the Eames House are bathed in a golden glow every day. Discover the iconic interior of Ray & Charles Eames’ home in California.

text: Theo Paijmans

Fig 1. Ray & Charles Eames in their home | Julius Shulman photography archive, 1936-1997

Christmas Eve

The house and studio that Ray and Charles Eames designed in the coastal California town of Pacific Palisades is made of steel beams, stucco panels, and large glass windows. The living room has a five-meter-high ceiling and is almost entirely surrounded by glass walls. Ray and Charles believed that the sun would illuminate the room with a golden glow. Construction began in 1947. On Christmas Eve in 1949, Ray and Charles moved into their new home, never to leave again.

Tumbleweeds

Ray and Charles married in 1941. During their honeymoon, they collected tumbleweeds, which they later hung from the ceiling of their home. From the moment they met and began working as a design duo, it took until the 1980s before Ray was even mentioned in American newspapers. Until then, Charles served as the spokesperson for the pair, and the designs were credited to him.

Beauty

Ray and Charles did not want to be part of a design movement that viewed people merely as objects. When designing furniture for the home or office, the duo had a fondness for materials in cheerful colors. The desire for beauty is a human trait, Ray and Charles believed. They hoped their designs would inspire more people to experience beauty.

Fig 2. Eames House, 1994 | photo: Timothy-Street-Porter © Eames Office LLC

De Stijl

The Eames House is considered the most beautiful non-European tribute to De Stijl in the world. The house was part of a study for which 25 homes were built using materials and experiences gained during World War II. Ray and Charles wanted the Eames House to be both a sanctuary and a workplace – the perfect backdrop for their designs.

Spare bedroom

Their first workspace was a spare bedroom in their Los Angeles apartment. There, Ray and Charles built their first mold for shaping plywood, which they nicknamed Kazam!. Once they moved into the Eames House, they worked in the adjoining studio – ‘the shop’, as Ray called it. From this epicenter of imagination, Ray and Charles designed not only furniture, but also toys, such as the famous Eames elephant.

Hy Bomberg, friend of Ray and Charles

‘You could never separate them. If you asked him what he did and what she did, he’d say: “We do it together”.’

Connection

Charles died on August 21, 1978. For the rest of her life, Ray completed their ongoing projects and organized their archive. She stopped designing but continued to give lectures. Ray passed away exactly ten years later, on the same date as her beloved Charles. After her death, 1,850 photographs of Ray and Charles and 150,000 other items from the Eames archive were donated to the Library of Congress.

A Guy Thing

The famous Lounge Chair made its debut in 1956 on television, then still a modern medium. Anyone wanting to buy the chair and the accompanying ottoman had to pay a hefty sum. Marketing framed the chair as a typical ‘guy thing’. It was an instant success – its design evoked the shape of a baseball glove, making it almost impossibly American.