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Charles & Ray Eames
We celebrate the 100th birthday of Charles Eames by taking a look at the inspirational design partnership that was Charles and Ray.
By any standards Charles and Ray Eames must be considered among the most important - if not the most important - American designers of the 20th Century.
During the forty years that they worked together, the prodigious talent of this design team extraordinaire produced not only many groundbreaking furniture designs (some of which have never gone out of production since their initial introduction), but also significant architectural works, ingenious children's toys and puzzles and award winning films, exhibitions, and photographs.
"No, Ray is not my brother", is Charles' famous response to one ill informed journalist. The Office was indeed a husband and wife collaboration. They met at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and were married in 1941.
A year later they moved to Los Angeles and set up a studio in their spare bedroom where they came up with one of the most revolutionary ideas for furniture design of the 20th century - moulded plywood.
Anyone who has ever sat in comfort on a curved plywood chair in the last fifty years should thank the Eameses. Nowadays it's hard to believe that there was even a time before this ingenious product existed.
The seemingly simple concept came about after Charles and Ray's experiments with a homemade moulding machine, which they fed scrap pieces of plywood into that Charles had taken from his job as a set architect for MGM studios.
Their first product to reach the production line was a leg splint, which may seem unlikely, but with World War II raging, there was a need for more efficient splints for injured soldiers and the US Navy placed an order for 5000 of them.
When plywood furniture was first marketed in 1946, it was the most advanced furniture being produced anywhere in the world. Charles and Ray's work was both technologically and aesthetically innovative.
They created pioneering designs for chairs, tables and children's furniture some of which were made exclusively out of wood laminates, others combined plywood with tubular steel.
Perhaps the Eames' most recognisable design is the 1956 Lounge Chair and Ottoman. Made from leather and plywood, it fast became a symbol of corporate success in the 60's and 70's and a classic of mid-century modernism.
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