554 CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY The Eames Splint: Much More than Leg Support MITCHELL B. OWEN Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rarely has performing patriotic duty woven, or in this case nary, but in our old world, pretty things are usually laminated, so many primary social functions into one object equated with social irresponsibility.? as in the case of the splint designed and partially manufac- A close reading of the Eames splint and the context of its tured by Charles and Ray Eames. In architectural circles the production calls Smithson's normative characterization, and Eameses are widely renowned for both their 1949 Case Study many others like his, into question and reveals that this House near Los Angeles and their whimsically modern furni- particular view of the Eameses is just as much a product of ture designs which are still widely available today. Else- their office as any of their furniture or films. Only in this case, where, their films, exhibition designs, and toys have also the now identifiable Eames, that is, Charles Eames, the enjoyed critical attention and public enjoyment. However, "natural Californian Man," traverses the Atlantic to inspire their first successful commercial projects began withamolded rebuilding in the war-ravaged "old world" with his specifi- plywood leg splint produced for the US Navy during World cally "American life-form." It makes no difference to Smithson War 11. In a monographic history of the Eames Office the leg that Charles Eames moved to California when he was 34, splint, along with arm splints, litters, and airplane nose cones, hardly an impressionable age, nor that Charles's primary find themselves relegated to a technological footnote used to mentors were "old-world" masters - Mies van der Rohe and explain molded plywood experiments and processes which Eliel Saarinen. For this study, the methodology of mono- consequently enabled the office's first produced line of criti- graphic history is sequestered, bringing anecdotal evidence, cally acclaimed and commercially available plywood chairs.' banal chronology, and interdisciplinary inquiry into play in Eames furniture, however, should not be simplified as order to escape the temptation of formal continuities and formally attractive applied technologies: their production single-narrative histories which necessarily simplify the messy follows directly from their wartime projects within a matrix context of actual historical production. The results will be an of domestic and international ideologies, marketing strate- understanding of how Smithson's statements are both com- gies, and political maneuverings which inevitably impacted pletely accurate and ultimately untenable when confronted (reformulated in some cases) individual, regional, and na- with the complexity of the Eameses' operational milieu. tional identities and representations. But somehow, these The splint began as a suggestion by Dr. Wendell Scott in forces became nicely iced over, leaving an innocuous yet December of 1941, who, after having seen experimental ubiquitous naturalized historical narrative. For example, Pe- applications of the Haskelite molded plywood process7 in the ter Smithson's 1966 essay on the "Eames-aesthetic" reads: Eameses' apartment, suggested that they try to adapt the Charles Eames is a natural Californian Man, using his technology to the production of splints to replace the medi- native resources and know-how - of the film-making, cally problematic metal splints that were in use by the mili- the aircraft and advertising industries - as others drink tary. water; that is without thinking. And it is this combina- The Eameses had moved to Los Angeles from Cranbrook tion of expertise . which produces the apparent in 1941, into aNeutradesigned apartment complex which had casualness that is special to the American life-form and been secured for them by John Entenza, then publisher of its art-form. California Arts & Architecture magazine. While teaching at Cranbrook, Charles Eames had collaborated with Eero And, as it is the Californian Man's real originality Saarinen on molded plywood furniture designs which won to accept the clean and pretty as normal, it is not major prizes in the 1940 Museum of Modern Art's Organic surprising that it is the Eames' who have made it Design in Home Furnishing competition, with graphic assis- respectable to like pretty things. This seems extraordi- tance provided by Ray Kaiser, soon to become Eames. The 867" ACSA ANNUAL MEETING AND TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 555 Fig. 2. Wood-legged dining chair (DCW), 1945. Photo Credit: Eames Office 01989,1998 cwww.eamesoffice.com> Fig. 1. Finished birch and mahogany production splints, 1943. Photo Credit: Eames Office O 1989,1998 <www.eamesoffice.com> 1940s had successfully reconfigured the magazine from its house-and-garden regional format into a modern chairs were slated for production until war shortages halted multidisciplinary journal where the decorative arts and de- their progress. sign were being treated on equal footing with the work of The splint was presented to the Navy early in 1942. painters and sculptor^.^ Revisions were made and presented again in early summer, A new editorial introduction, "Notes in Passing," first with Entenza accompanying Charles Eames on this trip. With appeared in the February 1940 issue as an annotated calendar the Navy's approval the equipment for mass production of cultural events, but soon became a full-fledged editorial entered the design process with funding being provided by addressing the poverty of the arts in southern California, Entenza, and their first splint order came in November. The American isolationist tendencies, and fascist progressions in design team formed the Plyformed Wood Company which Europe. began to develop other molded plywood products for the The Arts &Architecture circle grew to includemost young military. In October of 1943, with production having difficul- architects and designers of note in the southern California ties meeting demand, the rights to the operation were sold to region, and with editorial eyes cast eastward, the magazine the Evans Product Company, which added the Molded Ply- focused on artists exiled from Europe as well as American wood Division and maintained the staff and its Los Angeles artists and critics operating both in Los Angeles and New location for future development with Entenza acting as man- York. In name and layout, the magazine reflected its change ager and president. By war's end, 150,000 splints had been from its regional roots to the international art and architecture manufactured and shipped to the Navy. In 1943 MoMA's scene: the most drastic graphic redesign had occurred in the Design for Use show included molded plywood splints among February 1942 issue which gave the magazine its first com- other Eames plywood forms? pletely abstract cover, and California was dropped from the John Entenza, himself an import to the Los Angeles area title inFebruary of 1944. The international recognition ofArts after having conducted preparatory training for the diplo- &Architecture is only partly indicated by Entenza's position matic service under the Secretary of Labor in Washington, as American editor of Zodiac, the international design journal DC, purchased California Arts & Architecture magazine in based in Milan and Brussels begun in the 1950's, and by the 1938, prior to his entry into the splint business, and by the numerous reprints ofArts &Architecture spreads, even entire 556 CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY issues, in foreign publications.' Grace Clements, a "Post-Surrealist" abstract painter act- ing as Los Angeles art critic from 1942 to 1948 and as an editorial associate for the magazine, perhaps best exemplifies the directly political and cohesive atmosphere within the magazines narrative objectives. Clements, active in the Ameri- can Artists' Congress, an anti-fascist art organization based in New York, from the time of its chartering in the 1930s, contributed an article to the March 1936 issue of Art Front, a vehicle of the American Artists' Congress, in which she criticized formalism and Surrealist automatism and argued for a publicly legible art that addressed social issues: "If we had art- really had it - we wouldn't have the kind of poverty, exploitation, ugliness, and general chaos with which we have lived for so long."'She saw Post-Surrealism, distinct from its European ancestors, as an abstract language that could still carry narrative meaning and continually reinforced her posi- tion in the art columns of Arts & Ar~hitecture.~ Alongside the political activism that was continually being championed in the publication's pages was a realization that things were going to be drastically different after the war. Entenza's 1942 "Notes in Passing" reads: We have created fictions and expected them to stand as truths solid enough to uphold a social attitude that has become so cumbersome that it creaks with the weight of its own patches. The future. has been delayed and compromised and denied over and over again simply because we have not yet satisfied ourselves as to the Fig. 3. Advertisement for the Evans Product Company's Molded methods by which we could buy and sell it.' [emphasis Plywood Division. Arts & Arcliitect~re(July 1944). added] This realization was indicative of a more general national the table of contents. attitude, primarily at the industrial production level. Adver- The advertisement features a boy looking anxiously to- tising before and during the war continually reinforced