Charles and Ray Eames Overview

The husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames began their joint career designing stretchers and leg splints from molded wood laminate during World War II. They continued to experiment with laminates and fiberglass in their postwar designing years,... [more]

The husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames began their joint career designing stretchers and leg splints from molded wood laminate during World War II. They continued to experiment with laminates and fiberglass in their postwar designing years, and exhibited the results at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the mid-1940s. The Eameses used these materials to industrially produce low-cost furniture in their signature, organic forms. The most celebrated of their forms is the "DAX" armchair (1948), one of a group of shell chairs that could be attached to a variety of bases; the chair won second place in MoMA's 1948 "Low-Cost Furniture Design" competition. While Charles was an architect by training, Ray was a painter first -- in 1937, she showed her work in the first exhibition of American Abstract Expressionism. Eero Saarinen served as muse and collaborator, helping Charles and Ray to refine their ergonomic chairs. They also incorporated the primary colors and stacked rectangles of De Stijl art into their office furniture and building designs. Their elegant furniture is still popular today. [show less]