Dine on an Eames table at Oakland’s Snail Bar

Classic Eames design comes to life at Oakland restaurant Snail Bar, where guests are invited to dine on Eames-designed tables in a nod to Charles and Ray Eames’ social gatherings.

The ‘Tables! Tables! Tables!’ exhibition designed by the Eames Institute explores the design philosophy of the Eameses’ functional items, while also celebrating the social purpose they served, with Snail Bar founder and chef Andres Giraldo Florez serving up culinary treats.

For Kim Colin, co-founder of Industrial Facility, the pop-up celebrates the positive spin that the Eameses’ put on industrial design. ‘Ray and Charles embraced industrialism and saw mass production as a way of making higher-quality things available to more people, inexpensively (summarised succinctly in the oft-repeated Eamesian mantra: “the best, for the most, for the least”),’ she says. 

‘In previous generations, furniture designers were hands-on practitioners with carpentry or woodworking skills and were limited to what they could create in their own shop, whereas the Eameses became masters of industrial craft at a global scale – a pioneering model we continue, with requisite care, to explore and refine today. They were not constricted by the style or taste of the time, but rather, they shaped it by adopting new materials and technologies and making them desirable and human scale. They never lost sight of the fact that a mass-produced product still must appeal to the individual, and its eventual success depends on the ability of those individuals to make it their own. This openness is part of the enduring appeal.’

The round ‘Segmented’ table, which Ray created with the intention of bringing joy to each guest, continues to be enjoyed today. ‘The Eames tables presented here – from one-off prototypes that test a technique or idea, to iterations that show how designs continued to be developed, to production models that offer a window into their systemic design approach, to more personal customisations – demonstrate the designers’ thoughtful approach,’ Colin adds. ‘While the chairs may have gotten the bulk of the attention, the Eameses showed that tables are equally important and useful cohabitants. They literally set the table for how we live with them now.’

'Tables! Tables! Tables!' takes place at Snail Baruntil 12 June 2023

eamesinstitute.org/collection/eames-tables/