Background
Ray Eames was born Bernice Alexandra Kaiser in Sacramento, California, United States, on December 15, 1912. She was a daughter of Alexander Kaiser and Edna Mary (Evans) Burr. She moved to New York in 1929 with her mother.
1948
Venice, Italy
Charles and Ray Eames on a Vecocette Motorcycle
1959
Charles and Ray Eames leaving Los Angeles for the American National Exhibition in Moscow
Mill Brook, New York, United States
May Friend Bennet School
39221 Woodward Ave, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303, United States
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Eames House Interior
Ray Eames in the spotlight
Charles and Ray Eames
(Pairing words of design wisdom with classic works, Essent...)
Pairing words of design wisdom with classic works, Essential Eames encapsulates the duo's achievements Charles and Ray Eames are among the most influential designers of the 20th century. Enthusiastic and tireless experimenters, this beloved husband-and-wife duo moved fluidly between the fields of photography, film, architecture, exhibition-making and furniture and product design. The Eames Office was a hub of activity where the Eameses and their collaborators produced an array of pioneering designs, communicating their ideas with a boundless creativity that defined their careers. The Eameses embraced the joy of trial and error and approached design as a way of life. From personal letters, photographs, drawings and artwork, to their products, models, multimedia installations and furniture, Essential Eames includes not only some of the designs for which they are best known, but provides an insight into the lives of the Eameses, the Eames Office and the breadth of their pioneering work, bringing their ideas and playful spirit to life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/394585217X/?tag=2022091-20
(An inspiring collection of the writings of two of the 20t...)
An inspiring collection of the writings of two of the 20th century’s most brilliant and influential designers An Eames Anthology collects for the first time the writings of the esteemed American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, illuminating their marriage and professional partnership of fifty years. More than 120 primary-source documents and 200 illustrations highlight iconic projects such as the Case Study Houses and the molded plywood chair, as well as their work for major corporations as both designers (Herman Miller, Vitra) and consultants (IBM, Polaroid). Previously unpublished materials appear alongside published writings by and about the Eameses and their work, lending new insight into their creative process. Correspondence with such luminaries as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen provides a personal glimpse into the advance of modernity in mid-century America. An inspiring collection of the writings of two of the 20th century’s most brilliant and influential designers An Eames Anthology collects for the first time the writings of the esteemed American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, illuminating their marriage and professional partnership of fifty years. More than 120 primary-source documents and 200 illustrations highlight iconic projects such as the Case Study Houses and the molded plywood chair, as well as their work for major corporations as both designers (Herman Miller, Vitra) and consultants (IBM, Polaroid). Previously unpublished materials appear alongside published writings by and about the Eameses and their work, lending new insight into their creative process. Correspondence with such luminaries as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen provides a personal glimpse into the advance of modernity in mid-century America.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300203454/?tag=2022091-20
(A Computer Perspective is an illustrated essay on the ori...)
A Computer Perspective is an illustrated essay on the origins and first lines of development of the computer. The complex network of creative forces and social pressures that have produced the computer is personified here in the creators of instruments of computation, and their machines or tables; the inventors of mathematical or logical concepts and their applications; and the fabricators of practical devices to serve the immediate needs of government, commerce, engineering, and science. The book is based on an exhibition conceived and assembled for International Business Machines Corporation. Like the exhibition, it is not a history in the narrow sense of a chronology of concepts and devices. Yet these pages actually display more true history (in relation to the computer) than many more conventional presentations of the development of science and technology.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674156269/?tag=2022091-20
designer filmmaker painter writer
Ray Eames was born Bernice Alexandra Kaiser in Sacramento, California, United States, on December 15, 1912. She was a daughter of Alexander Kaiser and Edna Mary (Evans) Burr. She moved to New York in 1929 with her mother.
Eames studied at the Sacramento Junior College in 1931. She attended the May Friend Bennet School in Mill Brook, New York, from 1931 till 1933, before studying painting with Hans Hofmann from 1933 to 1939. She also attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, for a year from 1940.
Eames, as a founding member of American Abstract Artists, exhibited her paintings in the organization’s first group show by 1937.
Eames met her husband when he was teaching at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she had come to further her own education as a designer. The two began collaborating in 1940. Shortly after their marriage, the Eameses moved to southern California. In addition to opening their own furniture workshop, Charles Eames designed sets for Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer’s film studio.
Ray and Charles Eames began their work in film with the 1950 production Traveling Boy. The duo garnered an Emmy for 1960’s Fabulous Fifties, which had appeared on the Columbia Broadcasting System’s television network earlier that year.
Ray and Charles Eames also found time to create innovative and experimental short films; the pair collaborated on the writing of these, while Charles did most of the camera work.
In addition to their work on government and special projects such as Glimpses of the U.S.A. and Think, the Eameses did several films for large corporations, such as International Business Machines (IBM) and Boeing. They often took on mathematical or technological subjects, as with IBM Mathematics Peep Show (1961), A Computer Glossary (1967), Powers of Ten (1968), and Babbage (1968) - a film about Charles Babbage, who planned a computer made of mechanical parts long before computers actually came into being. Other works in the couple’s oeuvre include several that feature their own collections of unusual antique toys with moving parts, such as 1957’s Tocatta for Toy Trains.
Many short films made by Ray and Charles Eames have been collected on a video series titled The Films of Charles and Ray Eames.
The Eameses did much of their work in furniture for the Evans Company of Detroit, then the Herman Miller Furniture Company of Zeeland, Michigan.
Shortly before her death in 1988, Ray Eames collaborated with John and Marilyn Neuhart on Eames Design, a catalogue of the furniture and design work she had done with her husband. The volume saw print in the year following her death, prompting Amanda Lovell in the New York Times to hail it as “long-awaited”.
(An inspiring collection of the writings of two of the 20t...)
(Pairing words of design wisdom with classic works, Essent...)
(A Computer Perspective is an illustrated essay on the ori...)
Ray was a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, the American Council for Arts in Education and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
She was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists.
Quotes from others about the person
"Now, actually, I think that she has been consistently functioning as a painter, and has functioned as a painter on and above the call of duty, because, actually, her hand and everything that makes it so is a part of everything we do, just as much of architecture as anything else..." - Charles Eames
Ray married Charles Eames, a furniture designer and filmmaker, on June 20, 1941. She had a stepdaughter.