Eames, one name, two people, Ray and Charles, a personal and creative partnership that made them a single, inseparable entity, who can hardly be described separately.
Charles Eames (1907-1978) and Ray Kaiser (1912-1988) were among the shapers of the American twentieth century.
Both their lives and their works finely embodied the social movements as they developed on the other side of the Atlantic: the exponential growth of the West Coast, the shift in the economy from the production of consumer goods to Information Technology, the global expansion of American culture.
The Eames embraced wholeheartedly the idea that modern design has to be an agent of social change: in their minds the creative process was successful only if it was capable of identifying the needs of the client, of society, and also those of the designer, by developing products that would satisfy them all.
Charles, born in St. Louis in 1907, studied architecture at Washington University in the same city.
In 1929, during his summer holidays he visited Europe and had his first opportunity to view at first hand the works of the architects of the Modern Movement. The constructions of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius opened up a whole new prospect to him.
He then opened his own architectural practice with Charles Gray in his home town, but  moved to Mexico for a period when the commissions began to dry up.
Returning from Latin America he opened a new practice in partnership with Robert Walsh, with whom he designed the Meyer house at Huntleigh Village.
In 1938 he was offered a study grant by the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he began to study design and architecture in autumn of that year.
He was appointed teacher of design the following year and head of the industrial design department a year later.
It was at Cranbrook that Charles met Ray Kaiser, recently returned from New York, where she had studied painting at the Hans Hoffman School, a powerhouse in the development of Abstract Expressionism, and also weaving under the guidance of Marianne Strengel.
The holistic approach to design at Cranbrook and its philosophy, that a better standard of living is achieved through good design, shaped their sensibility and gave them shared values. Both were attracted to the same moral imperatives and they shared the same profound understanding of structures and materials.
In 1940 Ray worked as the assistant of Charles and also of Eero Saarinen on their entry in the “Organic Design in Home Furnishing” competition, held at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Their presentations not only won the award but embodied two revolutionary production techniques: plywood molded in complex curves and arc welding to join wood and metal.
A year later, in 1940, Charles e Ray were married and moved to California, where he started work as a set designer for MGM.
It was in this period that the couple began to experiment with techniques of molding plywood, and throughout World War II, with a group of assistants, they even designed plywood airplane parts and stretchers for the Air Force. Their first series of mass-produced furniture drew on this experience acquired in wartime.
In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art devoted an exhibition to the couple. Called "New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames", it displayed the prototypes of the famous plywood chairs for the first time.
Herman Miller was the first to grasp the potential of the Eames' designs; he was also the one who began to produce, market and distribute their chairs, creating a fertile partnership that lasted for decades.
In 1948 Charles won second prize at the “International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design" with a set of pre-molded fiberglass chairs.
At the same time as they were designing furniture, the couple also undertook various architectural projects, such as their Study Houses built at Pacific Palisades and designed with Eero Saarinen. The Eames became well known to the general public also through their short movies, some of them used to back up their exhibitions, such as A Communication Primer of 1953, Tops of ’69 and Powers of Ten of ’77.
The couple also pioneered multi-media presentations, which enabled them to communicate complex ideas to the public through the variety of media: films, drawings and slides, of which the couple possessed an enormous archive all meticulously catalogued with brilliant and attractive graphics.
Their avantgarde exhibitions, such as Mathematica (1961), Nehru: His Life and His India (1965), A Computer Perspective (1971), Copernicus (1972) and The World of Franklin and Jefferson (1975-1977) were widely successful with the public. Through their designs, films and photographs, the Eames created a remarkable, modern visual language that had a very powerful impact both in the United States and abroad.
In their work they fostered the values of coherence, social morality, egalitarianism, informality and anti-materialism.
Among the major exponents of Organic Design and also among the greatest designers of the century, Charles and Ray Eames revealed how modern design can, and above all must, enhance the quality of life, awareness and understanding.