September 6, 2006
From the Archives: Ray Eames
This is the first in what I hope will be a twice- or thrice-weekly series, in which I pull out excerpts of interviews, reviews, or other material from various archives (hopefully also available online) for your pleasure.
Here are a few quotes from an interview conducted with Ray Kaiser Eames in the summer of 1980.
RAY KAISER EAMES: I didn't take any painting; I didn't want to, but I did other things. You know, it was just interesting to me. Charles at that time was teaching design, as well as working with Eero. Eero had just gotten out of Yale and come back to work with his father. They also . . . he and Charles became friends, because they were both working for Eliel. is this something you know?
RUTH BOWMAN: It's nothing that the Archives has heard from you.
RAY KAISER EAMES: So they would work on these projects, and then also work on things together at night. Eero was especially interested in competitions: he loved competing, and that's when the Museum of Modern Art competition came up and they were working together. I got into the middle of that.
RUTH BOWMAN: So you worked on the original chairs.
RAY KAISER EAMES: Yes, yes. I didn't work—I was like a hand, you know, just . . . . It was quite under way by that time; there was a model; I watched the photographing of the model, and then I worked on the drawings, the presentation drawings. And that ended, and then I left after it was sent in.
[ . . . ]
RAY KAISER EAMES: Yes, Charles had always been terribly interested in photography. I think it's been known that his father was a great amateur photographer and had left equipment. His father died when he was very young. He left his equipment and Charles started to read instructions and taught himself about photography. The great joke he always made was that he was making glass plate negatives before hearing that there was such a thing as film, because of having this old equipment. But he learned a great deal. Then he used it always as a tool, photographing architecture, photographing objects, studying it by photographing models. And I think he made some experiments in film when he was at Cranbook. Some film . . . I must check that, I think they might have it. We kept records of everything, but he never shot just a record, he always shot something and made a good-looking photograph. But then—that was another joke, but it had some truth in it—friends had left us a projector and editing equipment and we had nothing to project, so we decided to make a film—the film—but he was really interested in the whole. In terms of communication, he's always been interested in that subject, and this seemed to be the logical extension of it, the use of film for studying and putting things into form, that could be then handed over. We first made a film to experiment, just with the technique, and observing things, like toys—but I think that very first film also had the underlying quality of communication. We shot many toys, but shot them so that you could understand and see them in a way that you couldn't see them otherwise. It was brought out to be a thing in itself seen differently than you would otherwise see it, I think.
[ . . . ]
RUTH BOWMAN: And this relationship has continued over forty years with Herman Miller?
RAY KAISER EAMES: Yes, absolutely.
RUTH BOWMAN: And the production laboratory has always been here?
RAY KAISER EAMES: "Production laboratory"—that's a different way of saying . . . . I don't think of it that way.
RUTH BOWMAN: How do you think of it?
RAY KAISER EAMES: Studio, office—we call it "shop," the place where we work has been here, and the early production was here. Part of this building . . . it was unbelievable when you think back about it, having the actual production here, as it was during the War, actually making the splints and making the furniture, making all the experiments. Then it becoming Herman Miller and having half of the building be production and the rest of it our own, making films, walking over cables. The people who produced the things, you know, were all local people, many of whom had worked . . . most of them, as a matter of fact, who had worked on the splints during the War. They were made up of housewives and all mixtures of people, various carpenters and really, just sweet people that we'd known for many years.
For more information about Charles & Ray, check out the Eames Office website. The Filmes of Charles and Ray Eames box set is a beautiful object, but if you were to only buy one DVD I would recommned Volume 2.