Charles and Ray Eames are the reason why I wanted to become a designer. I was raised around art (my mother is an artist) but I didn't really become a design freak until I was a teenager and fell in love with the designs of these two amazing artists. When I was a teenager I lived in suburban Detroit. Clueless to me at the time the place where I hung out and took pictures with my friends just a stones throw away Cranbrook Academy of Art (known for internationalizing the Arts and Crafts movement) was also the place where they met.
Above is an image of the The Solar Do-Nothing Machine by Ray and Charles Eames. Via Daddy Types: The Solar Do-Nothing Machine was meant to be a toy that "does nothing." Or as Alcoa's Oscar Schefler wrote, "there is little pertinence in asking what the toy is supposed to do. it is not supposed to do. it is supposed to be. its whole function is in its being." Charles Eames' interest was in play as an experience, an encounter, a mental exercise of discovery and emerging awareness: "We now have a moment in time which is very precious; but this is valid only if the toy does nothing."
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Having gone to Cranbrook, it's hard to deny the Eames legacy from becoming part of your creative dna. Their playful, light hearted, childlike exploration of themes, materials and ideas wasn't something that began and ended with their presence there - it's still very much what the experience is like there today.
Saarinen and Booth built Cranbrook, but Charles and Ray defined it.
Sometimes in the evening I would walk by one of the studios and see the silhouette of an Eames armshell rocker in a window and I would just smile.
"Who ever said that pleasure wasn't functional?"
- Charles Eames
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