Charles Eames/ Life Magazine/ 1950  

pure joy
and many thanks.
I have two big old boxes of the magazines in storage.
(from my parents attic)
But mine start around 58.
I've come close to ditching them a few times like my vinyl and
old cameras.
Nice little painting on the wall up the spiral stairs.

Thanks so
much for the trouble, WHC. A treat.
". . .which are easily joined by a child to form odd shapes." Wasn't Modern a rush ?

I
wonder what became of Billy Wilder's custom experiment ? Any drawings of that . . .???????

Who knew--- Billy Wilder, designer's muse!
Just read that Charles Eames designed the 670 lounge chair as a birthday gift for Billy Wilder. ("Eames had no thought of marketing it until Herman Miller asked to be allowed to manufacture it.")
And, also the 1968 chaise:
"While director Billy Wilder was in Nova Scotia filming the Spirit of St, Louis, he caught a quick nap every afternoon on a narrow plank set between sawhorses. Wilder remarked to his good friend Charles Eames that he needed something similiar but a bit more comfortable for his office back in Hollywood. Eames took him seriously and in 1968 designed a slender, armless form with a built-in wakeup call. It required Wilder to lie on his back with his arms folded over his chest. Once he dozed off, his arms relaxed, dropped to his side and gently awakened him."
(Of course, I may be more thrilled by this design trivia than the average person-- I've worshiped Billy Wilder since I was old enough to play hooky, then spend the days hanging out in dark revival houses.)

Darn
Why can't I see anything you post ?
🙁

Make the switch to firefox
Robert, we had this conversation on some other thread. You have to switch over from Internet Explorer to Firefox. I'm using Mozilla Firefox and I can see everything now except those pictures of the sideboard on the other thread which never came up on my screen.

"Charles, Charles, Charles"
william, thanks very much for sharing. Great stuff. Ray is conspicuously absent. I wonder if Charles was very traditional in that sense, or if it was a tactical decision to downplay Ray's role.
robert1960, Riki is right about the pictures. You need a decent browser.

Oh Yes!
Just looked on a Safari browser..great pics !

Re: Ray
I don't think he was traditional in this respect. The well known clip of Charles and Ray unveiling the lounge and ottoman on television shows this. He makes Ray's role in the Eames design process known verbally.
I was wondering the same about this excerpt however.

Kinda sad
but up until fairly recently Ray's role has always been sidelined - mostly by other media, if not neccesarily by Charles.
She was often thought of as 'the decorator' or 'stylist' rather than 'designer'. The implication being that color, fabric, and surface were the realm of women, and structure, purpose, and material the realm of men.
A really terrible example of such sexism occurs in "Eames Lounge: Icon of Modern Design" which features David Hanks & Pat Kirkham interviewing Don Albinson of the Eames Office. He claims almost full responsibility of the Eames Lounge, and disputes the claims that Ray had anything to do with it at all.
David: "Where was Ray in the design process?"
Don: "In her room."
Pat: "The drawings are for the experimental chairs of the 40s"
Don: "These drawings are a total and complete mystery. I never saw any drawings of furniture drawn by Ray."
Pat: "Did Ray have any role in this (the Lounge)?"
Don: "Someone asked me about Ray's function in the office. You didnt go to her for answers. You went to Charlie. Did she influence his decisions? Probably. She did not participate physically in the development of any of the chairs I worked on until the last one in 1968 - the Alu group."
Whats amazing about this exchange is the drawing/letter from Ray to Charles, in which she explains how she, Don, and Sando (Alexander Girard) worked on the chair, discussed the connections between the headreast and the back, and tilted the arms.