office Table

描述

In honor of Women’s History Month, a series on women designers who created era defining objects and structures that shaped furniture, fashion, architectural and interior design.

Ray Eames was born in California and pursued her interests in fashion design, abstract expressionist painting and textiles.

Her distinctive abstract yet organic textile designs are among the most popular patterns used by interior designers world wide.

When Ray met Charles, she was an accomplished abstract artist, fashion and textile designer.

She continued to paint, design textiles and illustrate for Art and Architecture magazine until 1947, when she chose to devote her time and energy to building and expanding their design studio.

Charles was the more charismatic, public face of their design firm, but Ray was the firm’s true heart and soul.

Ray was the designer, Charles, the architect.

Ray was the driving force behind the firm’s designs. Her obsessive attention to detail in her choices of color, materials, and basic forms led to the creation of iconic furniture pieces that are still manufactured by the Herman Miller company.

I covet the Eames plywood lounge chair, it speaks to Ray’s philosophy on design:

“What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.”

Her designs do more than work, they show that function, comfort and practicality can, and I think should, be beautiful.

By the 1970s Ray was taking an increasingly public role and feminist art critics were drawing attention to her contributions to Eames Design.A true leader, she always recognized and gave credit to everyone in her firm.

When she was asked about a specific piece of furniture, such as her design of the classic Time-Life chair, better known as the Eames Office Chair and office table, Ray said that she contributed to the design in a million ways, but that was something everyone in the office did.