Charles & Ray Eames ephemera and photographs, circa 1951-circa 1962

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Summary

Creators:
Eames, Charles and Eames, Ray
Extent:
3.0 Linear feet (1 box)
Language:
Preferred citation:

Charles & Ray Eames ephemera and photographs, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

Background

Scope and content:

The Charles & Ray Eames ephemera and photographs span 3 linear feet and date from circa 1951 to circa 1962. The collection consists of printed ephemera and black-and-white photographs. Printed ephemera take the form of advertisements for Eames furniture designs manufactured by the Herman Miller Furniture Company; for an Eames lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles; and for Eames movies and television programs. Photographic prints in the collection document interior and exterior photographs of the Eames house in Pacific Palisades, California, as well as their Moscow exhibit, and portraits of the husband and wife design team.

Biographical / historical:

The Eames Studio, known primarily for their furniture, exhibition, and architectural design was established by the husband and wife design team Charles and Ray Eames in 1941.

Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied architecture at Washington University for two years. In 1930 he began an architectural practice in St. Louis with Charles Grey. In 1938 Charles Eames moved to Michigan to study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he later would become a teacher and the head of the industrial design department. After divorcing his first wife, Charles married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser.

Ray Kaiser Eames was born on December 15, 1912 in Sacramento, California. She attended the Bennett Women’s College in Millbrook, New York, where she studied abstract expressionist painting with Hans Hofmann. In 1940 Ray Eames began at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she met Charles Eames.

Once the two were married they relocated to Los Angeles, where they established the Eames Studio. During the war they were commissioned by the Navy to produce molded plywood splints and stretchers and by 1946, Evans Products began producing the Eameses’ modeled plywood furniture. Later on in their career they began to design museum exhibits and venture into photography and filmmaking. Charles Eames died in 1978 and Ray Eames died in 1988. After Charles Eames death the firm dissolved.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Partially processed collection, open for use by qualified researchers.

Preferred citation:

Charles & Ray Eames ephemera and photographs, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

Location of this collection:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-7130, US
Contact:
(805) 893-2724
adc@museum.ucsb.edu
Website