02 January, 2008

Mad About Eames

Eames Wire Mesh Chairs - advertisement
This particular advertisement for the Eames Wire Mesh chairs has an almost 'Hitchcock' air about it - not sure if it the lone bird, or the post-modernist grpahic appeal, almost 'Charade' 1963 - Audrey Hepburn & Cary Grant.
Sofa Hang Tag - Eames for Herman Miller
I have such a pengent for post-modern advertising and printed product info such as this image of a sofa hang tag for a Eames (for Herman Miller) sofa lounge.
Eames Rocking Chair
Eames Alumiunium Chairs 1958
I love these chairs I am looking at getting 2 replicas for our newly design open office/ media area. Not only are they comfortable but after 50 years the purity of the design remains ever so contemporary.

Eames Lounge Chair 1956
There's a fantastic upholsterer and furniture seller in Sydney, located in inner-city suburb Glebe, that always seems to have this Eames lounge chair and ottoman in their window I pass it almost everyday and always have to make sure I keep my eyes on the road - Not sure if it's the owners and they show it off to get people's attention or unbeknown to me it hasn't found a home yet! Ahgast!

Bio on the legendary Product Designer / Artist - Charles Eames
Charles Ormond Eames, Jr was born in 1907 in
Saint Louis, Missouri. By the time he was 14 years old, while attending high school, Charles worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture (and also first entertained the idea of one day becoming an architect).
Charles briefly studied architecture at
Washington University in St. Louis on an architectural scholarship. He proposed studying Frank Lloyd Wright to his professors, and when he would not cease his interest in modern architects, he was dismissed from the university. In the report describing why he was dismissed from the university, a professor wrote the comment "His views were too modern." While at Washington University, he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they had a daughter, Lucia.
After he left school and was married, Charles began his own architectural practice, with partners Charles Gray and later Walter Pauley.
One great influence on him was the Finnish architect
Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect, would become a partner and friend). At the elder Saarinen's invitation, he moved in 1938 with his wife Catherine and daughter Lucia to Michigan, to further study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design department. One of the requirements of the Architecture and Urban Planning Program, at the time Eames applied, was for the student to have decided upon his project and gathered as much pertinent information in advance – Eames' interest was in the St. Louis waterfront. Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New York's Museum of Modern Art "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition.[1] Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding (originally developed by Alvar Aalto), that Eames would further develop in many moulded plywood products, including, beside chairs and other furniture, splints and stretchers for the U.S. Navy during World War II.[2]
In 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, who was born in Sacramento, California. He then moved with her to Los Angeles, California, where they would work and live for the rest of their lives. In the late 1940s, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine's "Case Study" program, Ray and Charles designed and built the groundbreaking Eames House, Case Study House #8, as their home. Located upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and hand-constructed within a matter of days entirely of pre-fabricated steel parts intended for industrial construction, it remains a milestone of modern architecture.

Source - see wikipedia.com

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