Charles & Ray Eames

Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended attending Washington University but was thrown out for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1930 he started his own architectural office. Ray Kaiser Eames was born in 1912 in Sacramento, California. She studied painting with Hans Hofmann in New York before moving to Cranbrook Academy where she met and assisted Charles and Eeero Saarinen in preparing designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Furniture Competition. They married in 1941 and moved to California where they kept working on furniture design in molded plywood. In 1946, Evans Products began producing the Eameses' molded plywood furniture. Their chair was called 'the chair of the century' by critic Esther McCoy. Soon after the production was taken over by Herman Miller Inc. who still produces for them to this day, along with Vitra International that handles Europe.