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Charles and Ray Eames Author(S): Esther Mccoy Source: Design Quarterly, No Charles and Ray Eames Author(s): Esther McCoy Source: Design Quarterly, No. 98/99, Nelson, Eames, Girard, Propst: The Design Process at Herman Miller (1975), pp. 20-29 Published by: Walker Art Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4090932 Accessed: 27-02-2017 17:55 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Walker Art Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Design Quarterly This content downloaded from 130.182.24.103 on Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:55:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms L ........... .......... ......... .. ......... nr . ........ This content downloaded from 130.182.24.103 on Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:55:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms CHARLES AND From the beginning of the century, mass Eames and Saarinen, then at Cranbrook RAY EAMES production was the golden fleece of design. Academy, entered pieces in all the cate- Esther McCoy As the century advanced, the body of litera- gories. The most memorable entry was a ture and the body of faith increased, also the molded plywood chair-the first version of number of notable deaths. The world that the most famous chair of the century. Mar- could support the Model T killed off the cel Breuer, one of the jurors, recalled in Franklin. We deal here with Franklins. 1973 that he was "very positive" about the choice of the Eames-Saarinen entries in two Had Charles Eames been born half a genera- categories for top place. Looking back from tion earlier (into that of Alvar Aalto and Le a distance of 33 years, he summed up: "Ply- Corbusier) or even a quarter of a generation wood had been used before; I had used (that of Marcel Breuer and Konrad Wachs- metal. There was nothing new in the light- 11. I mann) he would have encountered few men ness or the materials, but what was new was of conviction. For, as George Nelson wrote that he had pushed his design into industrial in the first Herman Miller catalogue, "A production." good thing about having convictions is that one tends to act on them." The statement touches the quick but it leaps over the six years between the awards In this light I understood the poignancy of and the time in 1946 when Herman Miller Breuer's comment on Eames: "From the took over the production of the Eames chair. first, he has been in production without a That is to say, a move to California and a war single break." And Wachsmann's: "A fan- occurred; there was the trial and error of I-11 tastic opportunity." They were the ones who building production tools for the molded can (Emily Dickinson's expression) "Tell plywood pieces, the endless handwork in the definition .. of victory." preparation for mass production. Then Her- man Miller carried the operation out of Eames had another advantage. Architecture experimental mass production into true mass did not constantly summon him as it did production. There is a lifeline that saved others who designed furniture-Le Cor- the early Eames chairs from becoming col- busier, Aalto, Breuer, and later Eero Saari- lectors' items and has kept them in produc- nen; one was never in doubt as to their first tion today: mass distribution. allegiance. But then Eames was studying architecture during the Depression years In the months following the MOMA awards, when few were summoned. There was an- Eames discovered the gap between design- other factor. Designing of any sort for users ing for mass production and finding a who have not advanced to the point of manufacturer to produce. The best con- receiving was an act of faith which was much sumer price he could get was $75 ... exor- more in harmony with the 30s than the 20s. bitant for a side chair at a time when only The 30s was a cleansing decade; it reaf- ten percent of the population earned more firmed discipline and imposed responsibility. than $10,000 a year. That appeared for a In the writings of Eames the word discipline while to end the matter. constantly reappears like a good gray thread. Eliot Noyes summed it up (Arts & Architec- ture, Sept. 1946): "A basic reason for the The Museum of Modern Art's Organic De- wood shell ideawasthe belief that it would be sign show, where Eames first received very easy and very cheap to stamp or press recognition, was in the Ich Dienst spirit of them out in quantity. In actuality, it turned the 30s; the purpose was not simply to single out that there was no economical way of out the best entries for awards, but to find doing this, and no chance to experiment." furniture which in addition could be machine produced at a reasonable cost. Moreover, It was the last time Eames and Saarinen when produced it was to be sold at selected collaborated on furniture; Ray Eames, in- shops or department stores across the volved from the first at Cranbrook in the country. The geographic spread was very venture, turned her talents as painter and important because basic to the idealism of sculptor to a full-time collaboration. the 30s was the tenet that benefits should Saarinen, an associate by that time on his be widely shared. The furniture, according father's architectural projects, took over the to the Museum, should ". reflect today's practice in 1950 after his father's death; with social, economic, technological and the completion in 1951 of General Motors aesthetic tendencies;" it was to "... provide Technical Center, he became the most A 1942 molded plywood adequately and handsomely for a typical important young architect in the country. sculpture by Ray Eames American middle-income group family." The relates directly to the chair Eames, reflecting later on their diverging molding experiments carried eye was on the sparrow. courses, regretted that". .. in architecture on in the Eames's studio at that time. the idea degenerated," and to him furniture 21 This content downloaded from 130.182.24.103 on Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:55:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Eames Storage Units (ESU) (1950) (above), were modules of plated steel and plastic- coated plywood with metal struts and lacquered masonite panels adding stability to these - ... lightweight forms. The long, low table of black laminated plastic (center) resting on a delicate wire strut base, was also designed in 1950. Herman Miller's first Los Angeles showroom was designed by the Eames office in 1947 (bottom). Its facade is similar to that of the Eames's house-started in 1945-with _ f i I \ | \1 I Ll? 1? N t I? 1 : ( () I i ' N | its factory-made elements,_I I skeletal structure, opaque*_- and transparent panels. ... .... , _l A pyramid of Eames chairs ;.=f__7 l (opposite) contains many __rmmlXB_' variations on the fiberglass* i q_. _ - ,4 and wire shells, bases and i l E-!,4, _,, ____ upholstery forms that made up ___ the collection in the mid-50s. 22 This content downloaded from 130.182.24.103 on Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:55:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ,i t: t: - - l - v l g g t-a p -- - 5 l _ 'A _1 X | -_ _ lf- I __ - I _rB B ^t' _E_ _ __s_|; ff} * ' l Efff^" _F ,,....:..f- C.offb --..: .. sd. .. :. f .. 23 This content downloaded from 130.182.24.103 on Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:55:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms design was " . a more direct and pleasur- able route." He added, "If I feel guilty about chickening out of architecture, Eero was guilty about not giving architecture the careful detailing I could give furniture." Eames's statement that Eero treated furni- ture ". as a miniature piece of arch itec- ture" agrees essentially with remarks of Cesar Pelli, who spent ten years in the Saarinen office. "Eero's interest was in the theoretical concept; he was very little interested in working out the technology- he would give that to someone else to solve. He was worried about form, Eames was worried about how to produce. When Eames had to sacrifice style to keep the technology coherent, he would; Eero would have no hesitation about sacrificing the technologyto keep the style and form clean." An example was their two chairs with a single vertical element. Eames clearly ex- pressed the base and revealed the connec- tion; the base was painted black, you could see it was steel. Technologically it was very clear. It was for intellectual enjoyment. Eero had planned to make his pedestal chair entirely of plastic but when the stem would not take the strains, he made the base cast aluminum and painted it the same color as the plastic. He didn't mind the lack of intellectuality. Eames's convictions came out of, or were fortified by, things that happened during those six years. One was a chance to experi- ment. A production plant was set up by himself and John Entenza, editor of Arts & Architecture-a magazine which after the end of World War 11 focused attention on California, especially in its Case Study House program in which Eames and Saarinen participated; the Eames house, and Eames and Saarinen's Entenza house, Wire chairs, developed in 1951, were Case Studies.
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