Eames Little Toy offers myriad possibilities to build and play

Ray and Charles Eames conceived the Eames Little Toy in 1952 – a design imagined as a ‘tool of inspiration and creativity’, dedicated to children and grown-ups – and it was produced until 1961. Now the Eames Office has reissued the design for the first time, expanding the designers’ ideas to a reach new contemporary audience and demonstrating how their approach to design and play still resonates across the design world today.  

Eames Little Toy by Ray and Charles Eames

The Eameses were prolific in their creation of designs and ideas for children, including their playable Elephant sculpture (now reissued by Vitra in a variety of colours) the Colouring Toy (a kit allowing children to explore shapes through play) and the Eames Toy – a large-scale modular kit with parts that come together in infinite compositions for building play spaces. 

The Eames Little Toy is a compact version of the latter, and is a set with an open-ended invitation to build. Inside the box are eight printed cardboard panels in bright colours and patterns, wireframes and connectors that can be assembled into myriad compositions. 

The Eames Little Toy nods to the designers’ interest in prefabricated architecture and the simple intuitions at the core of their work, often defined by an essential visual language that uses colour to celebrate functionality. The parts that make up the toy can become houses, hanging sculptures or abstract desktop architecture, and their adaptable nature encourages children to play beyond the toy’s immediate limits, using the objects they have to build narratives and scenarios. 

‘Charles and Ray were serious about the designing of objects – from the initial brainstorming of constraints to an item’s longevity through the decades – and simultaneously, they derived many of their design processes from toys,’ reads a note from the Eames Office. ‘The intrinsic qualities of toys taught the Eameses that a design could be unselfconscious, simple in its use of materials, and provoke a feeling of delight.’

Eames Little Toy, $79, is available from the Eames Office

eamesoffice.com