Charles and Ray Eames
Words cannot describe how much we admire the rockstar designer couple of twentieth-century midcentury modernism, not just for their designers’ legacy but also for how they managed to live and work together so harmoniously.
Anyone familiar with the design industry will understand its core principles regarding working in creative design offices/studios. Often high-intensity environments characterized by deadlines, stress, and opinionated egos. Make no mistake, not in a bad way, the profession itself, by definition, attracts strong, self-centered individuals, usually from similar cultural backgrounds and comparable levels of intelligence. Always highly sensitive. A cocktail for conflict.
When you read about rock and pop bands splitting up after their second album, after the hype and the energy of the first creative outbursts have faded, all that remains are their personal differences. Usually, band members then continue to pursue their own individual careers.
Thus, in a dinosaur business moving at a snail’s pace, in a craft characterized by slow and steady progress rather than overnight success, where rewards are reaped at the back end rather than the front (Frank Lloyd Wright only started to gain steam after reaching seventy!), it’s even more astonishing that Charles and Ray Eames were able to build such a long-lasting and quintessential oeuvre that still looks young and fresh to this day. All this while being life partners and organizing their own daily mundane household tasks. Incredible!
They made modernist masterpieces the way we love them: sleek, elegant, and refined, but always warm, comfortable, colorful, and lively. No über-clean, white, empty, porn-chic boxes, but truly lived-in interiors with an eclectic, yet well-chosen selection of carefully crafted items, either designed by themselves or found on one of their many travel destinations. It was bohemian-chic, avant-la-lettre, almost half a century before the first tech billionaires came dining in flip-flops at Jondal.
Their understated eclecticism feels as authentic, fresh, and modern today as when it was designed 50 years ago. Slender lines, elegant forms. Curvy plastic shells combined with industrially manufactured steel and some sexy plywood, molded to its very limits. They pushed the envelope by experimenting, searching, and, most importantly, having fun while doing it.
"Take your pleasure seriously." - Charles Eames.
Maybe that’s the secret sauce?
Credits: Charles and Ray Eames Lounge Chair, Copyright Herman Miller 2019