Charles and Ray Eames

While the Eameses are usually thought of as furniture designers, the Eameses largely focused their efforts after the 1950s on film production, exhibit planning, book production and lecturing.

The Eameses’ short, experimental films are hard to pin down. Several (for instance, their most famous film, Powers of Ten, 1977) are regarded as science fiction. In others, where nothing really happens, the camera merely steadily looks on as spinning tops of various shapes rotate (Tops 1969) or as toy trains make their rounds (Toccata for Toy Trains, 1957). This intent and joyful watching of things is akin to what children do as they discover the world. After making Toccata for Toy Trains, the Eameses actually built a toy railway — a popular attraction for kids in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

In general, on such big projects as public attractions and exhibitions, which always entail a multitude of graphic elements, the Eameses also acted as graphic designers. In at least one instance, they acted formally as such. This was when they designed the titles for their friend Billy Wilder’s movie, Love in the Afternoon (1957). Earlier, in 1955, the Eames made a film about a favorite Munich candy shop. The film was presented as a slideshow employing three screens. The same technique was used for their Glimpses of the USA, which was featured at the great 1959 US exhibition in Moscow. That slideshow, which used stills and short videos rapidly succeeding each other, was shown on seven giant screens. Decorative Art in the USSR, a periodical, included a generally chilly review of the exhibition but admitted that visitors liked it. The US organizers also liked it, and the US government commissioned the Eameses to produce similar slideshows about science for the five pavilions of the World Exhibition in Seattle (1960—1962).

The first and most famous science exhibition created by the Eameses was “Mathematica,” made for the California Museum of Science and Industry. Copies were later made for touring. One now is in the possession of the Eames family, and the others are on display in museums in New York and Boston. The colorful and entertaining exhibit about algorithms and topology also finds a way, with

The Eames design office has recently been revived by Lucia Eames’ children and has produced an iPad app using the mathematics timeline. The Eames-IBM connection began when Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen in 1961 began designing the IBM pavilion for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Saarinen died suddenly in 1961, and Charles Eames continued on the project alone. The result was Eames’ most striking and largest project as an architect, although the building was a temporary one. Eames also laid out the displays in the pavilion, including in it another multi-screen slideshow. From then on, the Eameses did many exhibition designs for IBM. In the early 1970s, they designed several popular-science shows for IBM in New York City.

One is often tempted to view the partnership of Charles and Ray Eames as a happy creative union and credit all their work to both. In fact, Charles Eames preferred to describe himself as the designer of all Eames furniture. It is true, however, that the shape of the furniture was strongly influenced by abstract art and that, quite possibly, the agent of this influence was abstract artist Ray Eames. Ray Eames is believed to have been the author of all ornaments created in the Eames office. Ray Eames did not share her husband’s passion for computers and mathematics. From the mid-1960s, the Eames office was mostly focused on exhibition design, and Ray rarely took part. It should also be remembered that the office employed a large team of talented designers (Harry Bertoia among them). The role of the aides may have been quite significant.

films

exhibitions

texts and pictures and a timeline, to present the entire history of

mathematics.