Charles & Ray Eames

Charles Eames (Charles Eames, Jr) and Ray Eames (Ray-Bernice Eames) were an American married couple of industrial designers who made significant historical contributions to the development of Modern Architecture and furniture through the work of the Eames Office. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art, and film Charles was the public face of the Eames Office, but Ray and Charles worked together as creative partners and employed a diverse creative staff. Among their most recognized designs is the Eames Lounge Chair and the Eames Dining Chair.

Eames products were manufactured on Washington Boulevard until the 1950s.[3] Among the many important designs originating there are the molded-plywood DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and DCM (Dining Chair Metal with a plywood seat) (1945); Eames Lounge Chair (1956); the Aluminum Group furniture (1958); the Eames Chaise (1968), designed for Charles's friend and film director, Billy Wilder;[8] the Solar Do-Nothing Machine (1957), an early solar energy experiment for the Aluminum Corporation of America; and a number of toys. Herman Miller officially relocated the tooling and resources for the mass production of Eames designs to its headquarters in Zeeland, Michigan in 1958. Herman Miller, along with their European counterpart Vitra, remain the only licensed manufacturers of Eames furnitures and products.

As with their earlier molded plywood work, the Eames' pioneered technologies, such as using fiberglass as a materials for mass-produced furniture. From the beginning, the Eames furniture has usually been listed as by Charles Eames. In the 1948 and 1952 Herman Miller bound catalogs, only Charles' name is listed, but it has become clear that Ray was deeply involved and was an equal partner with her husband in many projects. Charles was consistently advocating that Ray was his equal. In August 2005, Maharam fabrics reissued Eames designed fabrics; Sea Things (1947) pattern and Dot Pattern.[9][10] Dot Pattern was conceived for The Museum of Modern Art's “Competition for Printed Fabrics” in 1947. The Eames fabrics were designed solely by Ray. In 1979, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Charles and Ray with the Royal Gold Medal. At the time of Charles' death they were working on what became their last production, the Eames Sofa, which went into production thanks to Ray's efforts in 1984.