When her mother died in 1940, Ray enrolled at Cranbrook, where she audited a variety of subjects. While at the Art Students League she was involved with the American Abstract Artists Group, and had her first show at the Riverside Museum, in New York.

After graduating, Ray moved to Manhattan and enrolled at the Art Students League and studied painting under Hans Hofmann. After her father's death in 1929, Ray and her mother moved to New York's Bennett College to be closer to her brother, an army cadet at West Point. Her father was a theatre manager-turned-insurance salesman and both parents encouraged her love of art, film and dance. At Cranbrook, Charles deepened his working relationship with Eliel's son Eero-with whom he would win the 1940 Museum of Modern Art Organic Furniture Competition-and found new collaborators notably Harry Bertoia and, later, Ray Kaiser.īefore they met: Ray Eames (née Bernice Alexandra Kaiser)īorn in Sacramento, California in 1912 as Bernice (Ray) Alexandra Kaiser, Ray came from a close, creative family. He sought the advice of the architect Eliel Saarinen who had offered him a fellowship at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Charles soon became head of the Department of Industrial Design. At the time, Charles was asked to design a house for the Meyers, friends of theirs. After eight months away, on what Charles called his 'On The Road tour' in Mexico, he eventually set up another practice in 1935. Although initially this office won commissions for houses, it folded in the Depression era. A year later, their daughter Lucia was born (1930-2014).īack in St Louis, Charles opened his first architectural office. Catherine’s father paid for them to honeymoon in Europe, where they saw the work of Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe and Walter Gropius. His class yearbook described him as ‘a man with ideals, courage to stand up for them and ability to live up to them.’ After high school, he won an architecture scholarship to Washington University in St Louis where he met a fellow student, Catherine Woermann. Charles helped to support the family with part-time jobs, but still excelled at school. When Charles was seven, his father was shot in a robbery, and eventually he died six years later. Although united by an intense passion for design and a romantic partnership, before they met Charles and Ray’s paths were very different.īorn in 1907, Charles Ormand Eames grew up in St Louis, Missouri where his father, a keen amateur photographer, worked in railway security. Even their house, built as part of an initiative for the design of post-war housing, has become an established symbol of American Modern Design. Based in the same California studio they kept throughout their career, they created an astonishingly diverse body of work that included moulded plywood splints, chairs, short films, exhibition designs, lesson plans, and even children’s toys.

Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1988) Eames were a husband-and-wife design team that are widely regarded as some of the most influential practitioners of modern design in the 20th century.

Eames power of ten