Self-portrait of in 1928. were among the greatest designers of the 20th century, and their signature creation,the and Ottoman, turned 50 this year. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN

But Ray, who was born by Rob and raised here, is still a Turner relative unknown in her hometown.

76 DECEMBER/ JANUARY 06 | 07 DECEMBER/ JANUARY 06 | 07 77 Video clips from “Powers of 10” ally less rare than you might guess. Even (especially in a time before that was common), which would prepare pre-fabricated houses, with the idea that they could be inexpensively though few people here probably realize that them for their explorations into art, design and innovation. Ray’s mass-produced for returning soldiers and their families. The Eames entry If you were one of the one of America’s most important designers father, Alexander Kaiser, was Jewish, and her mother, Edna was Epis- became an almost instant architectural icon, a steel framed box with was born over at Sutter Memorial on F Street, copalian, the latter of which is how Ray was raised. vibrant colors that looked almost like a 3D Mondrian painting. Charles 17,000 fans who’d turned her presence looms large here. The lounge And despite the fact that Ray left Sacramento in 1931 for New and Ray moved in in 1949, and would never live elsewhere. chair she created with husband Charles is no York, it was in the Midwest that she met Charles. The two were study- But as celebrated as it was, it would pale in comparison to the work that doubt in hundreds, if not thousands of local ing at the acclaimed Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. They made them a household name. out to see Coldplay at Arco homes. Have you ever sat in one of those black got married 10 years later (Charles divorced his first wife Catherine rows of chairs at the Sacramento airport? shortly before that), and moved to Southern , where they’d The Chair Arena earlier this year, you Then you’ve sat in an Eames chair. And since live for the rest of their lives. If it seems extraordinary that the Powers of 10 film is still relevant in it opened earlier this year, the new Design Their similar upbringings may have given them a shared phi- today’s pop culture, 30 years after its creation, it doesn’t hold a candle to might remember their per- Within Reach store on 16th Street in midtown losophy in life, but ultimately it was their different experiences in the the lasting relevance and outright popularity of the Eames Lounge Chair has had two giant pictures of Charles and Ray, arts that made them such a potent partnership. Charles was trained & Ottoman. A chair that was initially designed to be a mass-market piece formance of “The Scientist.” one in the window display and another inside. as an architect and Ray was primarily a painter, one who’d studied manufactured by Herman Miller in 1956, has taken on a life of its own, But there’s virtually no talk of one of our truly under the great modernist painter Hans Hoffman. And each informed having sold more than 100,000 units since it was released. But what about that great native daughters. the other, whether they were designing homes, furniture, films (like Charles famously commented that it was intended to have the There may, however, be a few reasons Powers of 10) or had other projects that made them some of the most “warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt.” Charles and mesmerizing video that why Ray’s not better known here. The fact is, prolific artists of their time. (In fact, in Ray’s final years, she helped Ray and their staff at the Eames Office spent years perfecting the design even though she lived here in Sacramento arrange the donation of over one million items from their estates to of the chair. And the very first one famously went to their friend, the accompanied it as Chris until she was 19, she really didn’t reflect the Library of Congress). director Billy Wilder. publicly on her younger years. In fact, the “People want to say that Charles was the architect and Ray was After gracing magazine covers in the ’50s, its popularity ebbed some- Martin sat playing Eameses didn’t reflect much at all. “Charles the painter, and that was true, of course, but they were a great team what in the ’80s, but never died. And then in the ’90s, as mid-century The film opens deep in space, and and Ray were always looking forward,” says because they both had a bit of both,” says Demetrios. “Charles would modernism came back into vogue in a big way, the Chair led the way. Even say Ray puts things in and I take things out. She always knew he Frasier Crane was making Eames references on Thursday nights on NBC. the piano begins its descent to earth, stars their grandson Eames Demetrios, sitting in the study of the celebrated in would take out what they really didn’t need, and he always knew that Early viewers will remember that Frasier had to move his beloved Eames flying by like fireflies. The United Pacific Palisades. “They hardly ever told those she’d put in things that they might not think they need. And that’s lounge chair to make room for his dad’s Barcalounger. States comes into focus, then Chi- stories [of their childhoods]. They were just what a good team is. You’re not doing the same thing. You’re helping But it wasn’t a passing ’90s fad. Open any copy of Dwell or virtu- cago, a lakefront park, and finally a so interested in what was going on; what new each other.” ally any other design magazine today and find the chair in its ads and man sleeping in a park. It continues thing was happening. I always asked every- Together, they pushed the envelope of modern design. At editorial pages. And Eames-mania has shown no sign of slowing down. In down to his hand and ultimately his body, Did they ever talk about the early days? Cranbrook, Charles became a close friend and collaborator with the fact, last year, Herman Miller sold more than 4,000 of the lounge chairs. skin, molecules and atoms dis- No.” architect , who designed modernist icons like the St. And not only can you buy the chair in the museum shop of the Museum of played across a panoramic screen. Another possible reason that she’s not Louis Arch and New York’s TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport Modern Art in New York (for a mere $3,500), it’s in the permanent collec- Science is humanized in one sweep- better known is that Ray herself has only (Saarinen actually named his son Eames in honor of his friend). And tion there. ing, simple sequence. The perfect been accorded the credit for her partnership meanwhile, Ray was studying painting, sculpture and color, her work It’s also a part of the permanent collection in the San Francisco Mu- complement to a 2006 modern rock with Charles in the last decade or so. It was finding its way into the Whitney Museum of American Art. seum of Modern Art, which is home to about 50 other pieces by Charles One of the most celebrated collaborations would result in their and Ray, says Ruth Keffer, a curatorial associate in architecture and de- ballad by the British supergroup. in 1995 that Pat Kirkham’s biography on the Eames, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers own home. In the late ’40s, a national competition was held to design sign. “She was a character,” says Keffer. “I think Ray was sort of the right Which is saying a lot, since the of the Twentieth Century, came out, and brain part of the equation. Of the two of them, I wish I could have met her. woman who co-created the film, Powers helped shed light on Ray’s equal contribu- She just seemed like a crazy woman—delightfully, wonderfully crazy.” of 10, was born in 1912. And she was tion to their body of work. In the 50s, when The fact is, both Charles and Ray were very much in touch with their born in Sacramento, only a few miles the Eames were at the height of their fame, inner child. Look no further than one of their fantastical classic films, south of where her film would enthrall society still found it hard to believe that a Toccata for Toy Trains. They also appeared to delight in every artistic thousands. woman could be an equal partner in such a endeavor they undertook. In fact, it was their films that first captured the Oprah would call this a full- celebrated entity of what was then known imagination of Dolph Gotelli, the founder of the design department at circle moment. as the Office of . To this day, UC Davis. Gotelli specifically remembers the film they made about their But when it comes to Ray Eames many people still believe Charles and Ray are home. “It was the first thing I saw as a design student,” he says. “They and Sacramento, this moment is actu- two men. In fact, in the May 2006 issue of were so innovative.” Vanity Fair, they were referred to as “broth- ers.” The Eames Lounge Chair Charles and Ray & Ottoman When scholars or even family try to connect Ray’s sketches the dots between what drew Charles and of chair concepts. Ray together in 1941, one of the first things to come up is their background. Charles was born and raised in another river city — St. Louis. And Sacramento, even then, was considered to be the most-Midwestern of West Coast cities. But both were also brought up in homes with mixed religions, which Eames biogra- pher Pat Kirkham suggests may have taught them both tolerance and an open-mindedness

78 DECEMBER/ JANUARY 06 | 07 DECEMBER/ JANUARY 06 | 07 79 the legendary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. She wasn’t studying to become a performer, though. She told Bowman that she was trying to “gain knowledge of movement and body and space.” That, in turn, she explained, related to painting, music and architecture. But with all this early exposure to music, theater and The four Sacramento dance, it was her years at Sacramento High School where her homes that Ray visual arts side really seemed to unfold for the first time. Even Eames grew up in. as a teen, she showed an early aptitude for drawing and color. The portrait opening this feature was done in 1928, when Ray was only 15 or 16. Where she was from Sacramento High’s 1931 yearbook shows her in a picture But long before Ray Eames went on to worldwide acclaim as an artist and designer, she was with the school’s art club. And her early drawings are largely aggressively feeding her brain with as much culture as she had access to in 1920s Sacramento. fashion-based, yet another creative avenue that she would go An experimental Whether it was music, dance, theater or drawing, the arts were a huge part of her early life here. on to explore throughout her career. She also seemed to be plywood chair. Her parents, Alexander Kaiser and Edna Burr Kaiser, had met and married in Stockton, but studying color palettes, experimenting, and learning the then moved to San Francisco, and eventually to Sacramento in 1911 — the year before Ray was basic building blocks that she would take with her to born. Her older brother Maurice had been born in Stockton. The Kaisers moved to Sacramento college. In fact, a report card from her freshman year when Alex, then a vaudeville theater manager, was sent here to manage the Empress Theater, at Sacramento Junior College, just before she left Sacra- which is now the Crest Theatre. mento in 1931, included courses in art history, illustra- Alex was bringing in vaudeville acts from around the country. In 1917, he told The Sac- tion, art anatomy, poster art, and chorus. And that was ramento Bee that one of his proudest achievements came during his Stockton days, where he just in one semester. claimed to be the first theater manager in the country to pay entertainer Al Jolson $100 a week. But two things would precipitate Ray’s departure In an interview conducted in 1980 by oral historian Ruth Bowman, when Ray was 68, she from Sacramento. The first was her father’s death in July, talked about her father. “My father loved being in nature, and we would go out in the country 1929 at 56 years old, just months before the stock market when we were very small,” said Ray. “Sunday meant going . . . he just liked the idea of spending crashed. He had a heart attack while visiting Lake Tahoe, and the time in nature. Almost every Sunday possible—it was marvelous—picnics and all that.” died soon after in San Francisco. But Demetrios says that Eames-designed waiting In fact, Alex would send postcards from his fishing trips in Lake Tahoe to Ray at their Curtis Kaiser’s insurance career left the family in a much better situa- chairs at Sacramento Park home. And later in life, Charles and Ray would vacation with Billy Wilder and his wife in tion than they would have otherwise been. “In the Depression,” International Airport Tahoe. says Demetrios, “to have any regular income that was like an Alex eventually left the Empress to work for the Sacramento-based department store Wein- annuity, was huge.” A picture of Charles stock-Lubin & Co., but returned to open Sacramento’s first Loews Theater at 12th and J. Unlike Ray went on to graduate on January 22, 1931 in a ceremony and Ray in a local Ray as a young girl, the Empress, this wasn’t vaudeville anymore. It was a motion picture theater, but Kaiser ran that at the Memorial Auditorium. She left Sacramento Junior Col- window display. and with her family for only a year before launching a new career in the insurance business in 1918, a decision that lege when her brother Maurice got accepted to West Point, in Sacramento. would later pay off when the Depression hit. her mother decided that she and Ray would move to New York. As a result of her father’s theater ties, Ray was exposed to the arts at a very early age in Ray would return to Sacramento to visit friends, though, and Sacramento, and her grandson Demetrios (who is technically Charles’ grandson; Ray never had was even mentioned and photographed for the San Francisco any biological children) says he thinks she met many of the entertainers of that era through her Examiner during one of her trips back home to Sacramento in father. “What I think her upbringing did was expose her to a lot of 1936. really cool experiences that were a little bit on the margins,” he says. “I think what he may have given her was this idea of being right on the A Legacy cusp.” Charles and Ray were married for 37 years, until his death on Her exposure to the theater also may have led to her early and profound August 21, 1978. Amazingly, Ray died of cancer exactly ten interest in dance. When Ray was just a girl, she began taking les- years later to the day, on August 21, 1988. sons from the Leila Maple Dance Studio at 21st and K, then the city’s The body of work that they created together is staggering. preeminent dance school. She even appeared in a dance program from And in almost every photograph, they appear together, work- The Eames House in 1922 when she was only 9 years old. This was during the time she was ing on one project or another – a film, a chair, a house, or just Pacific Palisades. attending what was then called the Highland Park School, and later Si- having fun, hamming it up for the cameras. Ray’s contribution erra Elementary School. The school actually still stands and is known to their work was dismissed for decades, in part because of today, fittingly, as the Sierra 2 Center for the Arts and Community, in ’50s and ’60s-era sexism, but also because Charles was the one Curtis Park. Ray would talk about Maple’s influence on her even toward enjoyed public speaking and was the face of the design studio. the end of her life. But in a gesture to Ray, Charles later renamed the studio In the Bowman interview, when asked about her interest in dance, as The Office of Charles and Ray Eames. And in recent years, she spoke about Maple. “My introduction was early,” she said. “It was it’s become increasingly clear that Ray was, in every way, [through] a very, very good teacher. Leila Maple. Oh, this marvelous Charles’ partner. woman had been a member of the Russian Ballet, long, long, long ago, For his part, Eames Demetrios bristles when he hears Ray’s 1931 Sacramento so her training was pure, and she turned it over to the children in the people try to analyze which one created which work. “One High School same pure state. A marvelous woman, who was beautiful and strong woman who worked at the Office said that if the Office had yearbook picture and gentle and strict — all the great things in a teacher, you know, and been an island, [Ray and Charles] would have been equals,” says so I felt that was a most fortunate happening.” Demetrios. “And that’s an interesting quote to me because T he Art Club of To Ray, one form of artistic expression was closely tied to another. She the Office was an island. Many people talked to me about how Sacramento High in was, at a very early age, culturally omnivorous. When Ray eventually after they worked there for six months they realized what Ray’s 1931 (Ray is standing, left to continue her education back East, she would go on to study with contribution was, and that it was major. It wasn’t just the icing just right of center) on the cake; it was the cake.” S MICHAEL ZWAHLEN SELECT PHOTOS_

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