In 1959 Alexander Girard was commissioned to design the interior of the New York restaurant La Fonda del Sol, a commission for which Charles and Ray Eames designed the seating.

Yet whereas the La Fonda dining chair and La Fonda side chair are well-known, if currently out of production, components of the Eames’ canon, what of the La Fonda bar stool…….

La Fonda Bar Stool by Charles and Ray Eames

The Historia Supellexalis C for Cranbrook Academy of Art

Cranbrook

An Alma Mater; An Academy of Art; A colony of experimentation

Wandering aimlessly through the digital Marcel Breuer Archive one afternoon, we stumbled across a letter dated July 25th 1950 from Peter M Fraser, one of Breuer’s employees, to the Eames Office, enquiring about a lighting design by Charles and Ray that Breuer was interested in using in one of his architectural projects, and requesting…

…”a lighting design by Charles and Ray”???

Eames lighting???

Eames furniture Eames toys Eames exhibitions   Eames textiles Eames films Eames photography

But where is the lighting design in the portfolio of Charles and Ray Eames…?

Charles and Ray Eames: Often bright, but also illuminating......?

On May 17th 1955 Charles Eames*, as assignor to the Herman Miller Furniture Company, was granted US patent 2,708,476 for a “Furniture Frame Construction”, specifically for, “a skeleton type metal furniture frame or shell construction” formed from “a plurality of lengths of wire arranged in crossed relation with another plurality of lengths of wire and welded thereto at their intersection…”1

A patent which although important and interesting in itself, is and was in many regards just as important and interesting for developments that arose on account of it. And for what its (hi)story can teach us about the work of Charles and Ray Eames……..

Eames US Patent 2,708,476 for "Furniture Frame Construction"

In these dispatches we once doubted the prevalence of designer furniture in comics, noting and acknowledging the regular appearance of popular furniture designs in other visual media, we, off-handedly, opined, “… Designer furniture in a comic?”

Elegantly proving us very, very wrong the Vitra Design Museum’s exhibition Living in a Box. Design and Comics not only explores the use and depiction of designer furniture and lighting in comics, but also considers how comics have contributed to and influenced furniture and lighting design.

Living in a Box. Design and Comics, Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot

With their 1997 exhibition The Work of Charles and Ray Eames the Vitra Design Museum staged one of the first major Charles and Ray Eames retrospectives

Twenty years later they return to two of the 20th century’s most important creatives with An Eames Celebration: less of Charles and Ray, and more of the diversity, depth and continuing relevance of their work.

Charles & Ray Eames. The Power of Design, Vitra Design Museum

The September architecture and design exhibition recommendations are arguably the cruellest to write: the fact that the majority of the exhibitions end in the depths of the European winter meaning that as we sit here hoping that summer keeps going just a little, little, longer…. we’re forced to think about winter jackets and gloves.

And so before things get that far, best get out there and visit an exhibition!! Our five recommendations for September 2017 feature new exhibitions in Weil am Rhein, Los Angeles, Utrecht, Frankfurt and Malmö…….

smow blog 5 New Design Exhibitions for September 2017

Balans Femini by Westnofa Workshop and Eames DCW & DAR, as seen at Modern Design at GRAM: 20th Century Furniture

“Does the world really need ever more chairs?”, is arguably the question we are most regularly asked. Alongside, “What do

In the Director's Chair at Eames & Hollywood, Art & Design Atomium Museum, ADAM, Brussels

With the exhibition, The World of Charles and Ray Eames at the Barbican Art Gallery London coming to an end,

December is famously a half month – no one does anything useful in the second half of the month, unless

Normally October is all about design festivals, October 2015 wasn’t. On the one hand we weren’t at that many this

In our post from the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition “The World of Charles and Ray Eames” we noted the disappointing

The World of Charles and Ray Eames @ Barbican Art Gallery London

“The World of Charles and Ray Eames” It is inherent in the nature of America’s most productive 20th century creatives

Karl Gräser Sessel

We’re fairly certain most museum curators aren’t inherently nocturnal, it is however noticeable that the longer the nights become, the

In our recent post “Blurred Lines or What if Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke designed furniture?” we took a stroll

“We have a World’s Fair opening in New York again today and it will, as always with fairs, offer the

Vitra Charles and Ray Eames EA 101, 102 104

Older readers will remember how last year one of the Vitra Senior Manager’s quoted from this blog in his pre-fair

Playboy Architecture 1953 1979 Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt am Main

It is a universally acknowledged fact that men only buy Playboy to read the articles. And we only visited the

Charles Eames US Patent Nr 2,969,831 Side Flexing Shock Mount

“In the development and designing of furniture one prevailing problem is the means for securing parts of the furniture together

With autum’s algid wind in our faces and the promise of mince pies and Glühwein in our tails we approached

March 2013 was a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau….. its amazing we found time to actually write anything…….

While researching our post “Eames Alchemy. Or how Charles and Ray Eames turned steel into plastic…..” the most remarkable discovery

Charles and Ray Eames plastic armchair DAW side chair DSW Köln

“The new Eames plastic chair is a dream fulfilled”1 While one can, should, accuse the Walker Art Centre Minneapolis of

Living Objects Made for India Doshi Levien Grand Hornu Coconut grater

As part of the bi-annual Europalia Arts Festival the Belgian cultural institute Grand Hornu is currently presenting the exhibition “Living

As older readers will know a large proportion of the menial labour at (smow) is carried out by a team