An Eames Primer: Revised Edition

Description

An in-depth look at Charles and Ray Eames's prolific legacy-one that has placed them among the most important American designers of the twentieth century and at the forefront of modernism. Charles and Ray Eames's expansive and monumental career in furniture design ran from 1941 to 1978. This comprehensive and illustrated text serves as a guidebook to their most important pieces and themes. As beloved figures in design, art, and architecture who emerged from the optimism of the 1950s, the couple's egalitarian and humanistic furniture designs made them household names. Most famous for their chairs, they also created seminal works of architecture and film. Written by their grandson, Eames Demetrios, An Eames Primer is an easy-to-read and informational book to the world's most famous and influential furniture designers.

Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, is the director of the Eames Office and chairman of the Eames Foundation. In addition to his publications, including An Eames Primer and Beautiful Details, he is also an artist and filmmaker whose work has been displayed in London, Portugal, Indonesia, Tokyo, Cairo, Cyprus, Colombia, and more. Demetrios has published four books on the subject of his 11-year-old project, Kcymaerxthaere.

"Charles and Ray Eames were heroes to my generation of designers and I'm thrilled to say have once again become heroes to the present generation. The work of their office in all its variety is amazing and inspirational and demonstrates a real fascination with the detail of life. It is intensely human, charming, and kind. Their grandson, Eames Demetrios (I wish my mother had called me Eames), has documented his grandparents' life in great detail. It makes enthralling reading for any student of 20th-century creativity."--Terence Conran "From 1942 the Office of Charles and Ray Eames gerw like L.A. itself to a focal center in the widest world of design. This is the fascinating personal account of Charles and Ray and of scores of their talented associates who made it an atelier of our times, creating a charmed house of steel, a dozen museums, a hundred films, and myriad seats that welcome you in airports everywhere. Eames Demetrios sketches how the pair came together and shares experiences from his own childhood on to searching interviews with many articulate insiders, both light-hearted and profound."--Philip and Physlis Morrison "The Eameses are handsome, they are a couple, they look sexy, smart, and happy. It's almost enough to understand their miracle. They don't create beauty and intelligence, they just transmit what they are. It's easy, coherent. There is a serenity. When they drive a motorcycle, it's to experience balance and the minimum. Every picture gives a clue. They offer us the elegance of their happy rigorness."--Philippe Starck