Ray Eames, Multitalented Designer
Ray Eames (1912 – 1988), born Bernice Alexandra Kaiser, was a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, filmmaker, and designer of houses, furniture, exhibitions, toys, and more. She is known for her work with husband and architect Charles Eames and their employees at the Eames Office. “I don't know how to separate anything,” Ray Eames said when asked to define her role on projects; the office’s work was truly collaborative.
Charles Eames (1907 – 1978) was the public face of the firm. This, combined with the assumption that the man was the lone genius, meant he received a disproportionate share of the credit. Charles Eames constantly emphasized the importance of Ray’s contributions, making statements like “she is equally responsible with me for everything.” But his attempts to set the record straight were often ignored or dismissed, as in this 1977 interview:
Owen Gingerich: I remember so well how…we arrived at the Arlanda Airport in Sweden and you looked around and said, “These are all my chairs.”
Charles Eames: I probably said, “These are all our chairs.”
Owen Gingerich: Never mind.
Bernice “Ray” Kaiser was born in Sacramento, California in 1912. She studied dance, sculpture, and painting in California and New York. For about five years beginning in 1933, she studied with Hans Hoffman and worked as an artist. She returned to California to care for her ailing mother, who died in 1940. Ray then took the suggestion of a friend and attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. There she met Charles Eames, the school’s head of design. The two married in 1941 and moved to Los Angeles.
While at Cranbrook, Charles Eames had collaborated with colleague Eero Saarinen on the design of bent plywood chairs. When these designs were not able to be mass produced, Saarinen left the project.
Eames lounge chair and ottoman designed in 1956. Photo by Sailko, 2009.
During World War II Ray and Charles Eames, with John Entaza, formed a company to design and mass-produce plywood products for the war. Their output for the military included a leg splint, body litter, and aircraft parts. By 1946, the Eameses had applied the technology to furniture, designing molded plywood chairs, tables, and other plywood objects.
The Eameses thought of design as gift-giving, architectural historian Beatriz Colomina writes, with mass-production as the means to make the gift affordable. As an example, Colomina quotes Charles as saying they designed a chaise lounge for friend and director Billy Wilder who wanted “‘something he could take a nap on in his office, but that wouldn’t be mistaken as a casting couch.’”
Eames House, Case Study House #8. Carol M. Highsmith, photographer.
In 1946, Saarinen and the two Eameses reunited to work on the preliminary design of one of the few buildings the Eameses designed that was built: their own house. The house, Case Study House #8, was designed as part of a program by the magazine Arts & Architecture. Saarinen soon left the project and Ray and Charles Eames continued to develop and redesign the house until they moved in in 1949. Although perfectly suited to the designers, the house, which was framed with pre-fabricated steel, was also intended as a prototype for modern living. “It was the idea of using materials in a different way, materials that could be bought from a catalog,” said Ray.
Ray and Charles Eames continued to live in the house and collaborate on the design of multiple objects at multiple scales. Their office closed in 1978, the year of Charles’s death. Ray died ten years later. Their house in Pacific Palisades is accessible to visitors through the Eames Foundation.
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Sources:
Beatriz Colomina, “Reflections on the Eames House,” in The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention, ed. Donald Albrecht (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997): 127-149.
Owen Gingerich, “A Conversation with Charles Eames,” American Scholar, June 1, 1977, 326-337.
Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2001).
Pat Kirkham, “Pioneering Women of American Architecture: Ray Kaiser Eames.”