Who Designed the Most Famous Mid-Century Modern Chair? A Biography of Charles & Ray Eames
For more than 70 years since its public debut in 1956, the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman has maintained icon status, widely considered one of the most famous mid-century modern chairs. Its design was the culmination of decades of innovation by its husband-and-wife designers, Charles and Ray Eames, whose prolific partnership reshaped furniture design.
The ideas that would eventually grow into the Eames Lounge Chair were planted long before Charles and Ray met, the history of the Eames Lounge Chair being inextricable from the full biography of Charles and Ray Eames. Their design story began for Charles in St. Louis in 1907, and for Ray, in Sacramento in 1912.
“The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.” — Charles Eames
1907–1940: Charles Eames & Ray Kaiser
Charles
Charles Ormond Eames, Jr was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1907. By the time he graduated high school, Charles had held numerous creative and industrial jobs, and honed skills in photography, painting, drafting, engineering, and cartooning. In 1925, Charles enrolled at Washington University to study architecture, though his interest in Frank Lloyd Wright would prove too modern for the school, and he was dismissed in 1928 without a degree.
The following year, on honeymoon in Europe with his first wife (they would divorce in early 1941), Charles became enamored with the modernist architecture of Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. He opened his first architectural firm in 1930, and six years later, was offered a fellowship to Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art from the academy’s then director, Eliel Saarinen.
Ray
Bernice Alexandra Kaiser, nicknamed Ray, was born in Sacramento, California in 1912. She, too, developed an interest in the arts from a young age, practicing fashion design using paper dolls, inspired by costumes she saw at her father’s theater. In 1931, Ray moved to New York, where she was trained in painting and introduced to the work of abstract painter Hans Hofmann. Two years later, Ray enrolled in Hofmann’s classes at the Art Student League, where she honed her creative-yet-pragmatic design ethos until 1939.
In 1940, at a crossroads in her career, Ray began studying at Cranbrook. At the same time, the Museum of Modern Art was sponsoring the Organic Design in Home Furnishings contest, which Charles and fellow designer and friend Eero Saarinen (son of Eliel) intended to enter.
Ray Kaiser and Charles Eames met when Ray stepped in to help the pair with their contest presentation.
1941: The Organic Chair & The Eameses
With Ray’s assistance, Charles and Eero’s “Organic Chair” won the “seating for a living room” category of MoMA’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings contest, a pivotal moment in the careers of all three designers. The innovative chair had traits that would become hallmarks of future Eames designs, including simple, splayed legs, thin upholstered padding, and, most notably, a strong yet lightweight molded plywood shell shaped to support the human body. Though its molded plywood shell was not then as mass producible as intended (Charles considered it a failure) it sparked Charles’ and Ray’s lifelong fixation on molded plywood that would revolutionize furniture manufacturing and eventually give the world the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman.
Charles Eames married Ray Kaiser in Chicago in July 1941. The couple relocated to Los Angeles, where architect Richard Neutra offered them an apartment in his Strathmore Apartments complex. This apartment would serve as the Eames’ design laboratory, where they would experiment further with molded plywood.
1941–1945: Plywood, the Eames Office & WWII
Less than a year into their time in Los Angeles, the Eameses assembled Kazam!, a homemade part-oven, part-vise device designed to mold and cure layers of plywood. The device, made of wood scraps, a bicycle pump, electric coils, and a rubber balloon, required more power than the couple’s small apartment could offer, but that was no deterrent: Charles ran an electric cable up a utility pole – on foot – to poach electricity for their Kazam! Machine. They would eventually move their operation to a Venice studio space known as “901,” which became the Eames Office, and headquarters for their Plyformed Wood Company, founded in 1942.
Though World War II made some aspects of the couple’s research and design work more difficult, it provided the Eameses with an opportunity to give their experiments real-world experience. Their Plyformed Wood Company sought to resolve design flaws in the United States military’s leg splints, a project that not only succeeded, but also gave the Eames’ company some much-needed funding. Through producing more than 150,000 plywood splints, the Eameses were able to develop more advanced Kazam! machines, master their molded plywood techniques, and formalize their modernist design ethos which prioritized function and mass producibility above all else.
1945–1956:
Home Furniture & Herman Miller
As the war ended, Charles and Ray Eames resumed designing furniture, starting with molded plywood children’s furniture and playful animal toys, including the Eames Elephant. They designed an entire collection of molded plywood furniture, called the Eames Molded Plywood Group, which would go on display at the MoMA in 1946. This collection included the Eames LCW (Lounge Chair Wood), LCM (Lounge Chair Metal), DCW (Dining Chair Wood), and DCM (Dining Chair Metal).
That same year, George Nelson recruited Charles and Ray Eames to design furniture for Herman Miller, a partnership that would make publicly available some of the Eames’ most iconic designs.
1956: The Eames Lounge Chair & Ottoman
The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman made its national debut on the primetime television show, “Home,” hosted by Arlene Francis. Designed as a comfortable, modernized English club chair, the Eames Lounge Chair features lush, tailored leather cushions nestled into three molded plywood shells (four if you count the ottoman) with premium wood veneer exteriors, mounted upon pivoting cast-aluminum star bases. So thoroughly did the Eameses succeed in their goal of creating an ultimately comfortable chair, that the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is now considered a symbol of home luxury, sought after by design enthusiasts worldwide. The authentic Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is still manufactured by Herman Miller.
Shop Eames Lounge Chair & Ottoman
Charles & Ray Eames’ Legacy
In their several decades with Herman Miller, The Eameses expanded their design portfolio tenfold, debuting the Eames Shell Chairs in molded plastic, wire, and fiberglass, Eames Storage Units, Eames Hang-It-All, Eames Walnut Stools, and Eames Chaise. They also designed more furniture "groups", including the Eames Soft Pad Group, the Eames Executive Group, and the Eames Aluminum Group.
Through this collaboration with Herman Miller, Charles and Ray Eames defined modern furniture design, influencing both their contemporaries and generations of designers to come. They made standard an iterative, resourceful design process that reshaped – literally – how we use certain materials. Above all else, they popularized the modernist design principle of “form follows function,” now a slogan of mid-century modern design.
Charles Eames died on August 21, 1978, in his hometown of St. Louis. Ray Eames died exactly 10 years later, on August 21, 1988, in her home state. Charles and Ray Eames' furniture remains in production at Herman Miller and on display in museums around the world, a testament to its enduring appeal and the evergreen relevance of the couple’s design ethos.
Shop All Charles & Ray Eames
