The Eames Archives launches Bay Area headquarters offering the public a look in
The Eames Institute launches a new home for Eames Archives in Richmond, as part of its plan to open its treasures in the Bay Area headquarters to public tours
![The Eames Archives linked to the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity Bay area headquarters and archive exterior of white building](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jW9w6AFa4y7J8LXZ7sn6pf-415-80.jpg)
Everyone is familiar with the work of Ray and Charles Eames - even if they’re not. From chairs to spinning tops, the ubiquity of the Eames' contributions to design and public life is immeasurable - but the team at the Eames Center of Infinite Curiosity are determined to help us remember just why the Eames studio was worth commemorating. To that end, The Eames Archives at the Bay Area headquarters in Richmond, California is now open to the public.
The Eames Archives invites the public to enjoy its artifacts
Llisa Demetrios is the chief curator at the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity and the granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames and daughter of Lucia Eames. According to her everything in the Eames Archives is considered an artifact - a curatorial choice that recognizes the Eames as contributing to a particular moment in design history, one of slow time and experimentation, curiosity and innovation.
Widely known for its furniture design, the Eames studio was a design powerhouse in the mid 20th century, producing from airport seating to school children's chairs. A sizeable sample of its output sits along the exhibition wall and in the flat files room at the Eames Archives. Here, vitrine displays with endless openable drawers of ephemera and artifacts, from tops and kites, tables and chairs, notes and letters, doodles and collage are available to peruse.
The Eames Archives represents the magpie collection of the creative duo where every object is a potential prototype for a future design, a web matrix of ideas and samples. This object library offers inspiration to the world around them as a universe of images and ideas, a world much slower and more hopeful, filled with new technology after the second World War.
The Archives team is careful to point out and showcase Ray's earliest work as an abstract painter before modernist architecture was an international phenomenon. Her keen eye for colour and detail are especially noted as an integral part of the Eames' groundbreaking work, despite having her name routinely left off projects and products due to the era's inherent sexism. She loved ribbon bows and kept colourful scraps in cigarette boxes, labeled 'Ray's scraps' in her perfect looping handwriting. Her paintings are a highlight and reflect her influence.
With the Eames Archives now up and running, and open to public tours, more is yet to come. Out on the Eames Ranch in Petaluma, an old cattle farm property with lush fields of pungent bay leaf trees and hillsides thick with mud, land has recently been acquired in the process of an expansion.
So how is land included in archival work? According to Sam Grawe, Chief Brand & Marketing Officer, restoration is conservation. The work out on the Ranch speaks to the expansive nature of design - the Eames' 'Powers of Ten' documentaries famously comments on this - to include land in the process.
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
In collaboration with Sonoma Mountain Institute, the Eames Institute team has also opened a dialogue with ecologists. Using the Ranch as a means to rehabilitate the land as much as to create a happy place for visitors and Eames' enthusiasts alike, the team is now aiming to build a model/system of sustainability, from restoring native grasses to redirecting and recalibrating aquifers, reorganizing cattle grazing, and upgrading farm infrastructure.
Recognizing a particular moment in design history, The Eames Archives and Ranch are a poetic ode to the prototype and the process of experimentation, curiosity, and deep time that it took to perfect so many iconic designs.
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
IM Pei's Everson Museum of Art gets a modern makeover
The East Wing of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY has been given a contemporary refresh by emerging Los Angeles studio MILLIØNS
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Black Modernism’s lesser-known, at-risk architecture gems gain a lifeline
Conserving Black Modernism announces vital funding to save and preserve overlooked and endangered buildings by African American architects and designers
By Bridget Downing Published
-
Step into the Blanton Museum of Art's reimagined public realm by Snøhetta in Austin
Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas is completed and reveals its reimagined public realm and plaza designed by Snøhetta
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
This New York Townhouse renovation is a lesson in contemporary minimalism
TenBerke’s carefully considered New York townhouse is the reimagining of a century-old Manhattan structure that reframes vertical living
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Visit The Frost House, a lesser-known modernist architecture marvel in Michigan City
The Frost House is a lesser-known midcentury architecture gem in Michigan City, Indiana; we took the tour as the property goes on the market
By Audrey Henderson Published
-
Broadway designer Scott Pask’s Arizona retreat is a scene-stealing discovery
Scott Pask invites us inside his Arizona retreat, nestled in the foothills overlooking Tucson – a place to reboot, recharge and commune with nature
By Michael Webb Published
-
Upstate New York retreat Ridge House evokes land art
Ridge House in upstate New York, the work of Brooklyn-based studio Worrell Yeung, is at one with the surrounding countryside
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Rafael de Cárdenas’ first ground-up project is a forever home with waterfront views and hidden treasures
Rafael de Cárdenas reveals his latest completed project in the Pacific Northwest, a family home of calming spaces that bleed the outside in, and ten years in the making
By Ellie Stathaki Published