most of this information is coming from our good friend wikipedia, so if you want to know more, you know where to go.
charles studied architecture and may or may not have been kicked out for having ideas that were "too modern" for their time. he looked up to a man you may or may not have heard of, eliel saarinen whose son, eero, he later befriended and worked with. charles' work was often called organic and ergonomic in form which we can see in his (and ray's) design of the molded plywood chairs.
ray was teaching at cranbrook (an arty farty school in detroit that my mom incidentally went to) when she met charles, who at the time was married. she taught textile classes and later designed textiles for upholstery and accessories. oh, also she only wore clothes by the designer that created the wardrobe for "the sound of music"
at some point they fell madly in love and charles ditched his boring wife and kids to run away to california with miss ray.
there, in california, they designed and built THE EAMES HOUSE. the house was part of a project/competition of architects and designers. their house was made of all prefabricated parts and was constructed in just one day. there are so many great pictures of them the day the house was being built. they were really fun, wonderful people that loved to play and travel.
the couple was very much about the process of design and solving problems with beautiful and creative solutions. i believe this is why i love them the way i do. they never designed something and said it was finished right away, they asked themselves questions and really perfected the things they put their names on. trial and error was huge in the eames office. they also didn't only design when they were asked/commissioned to, they were always working on projects and searching for problems to solve. they really wanted to bring "the good life" to everyone, they thought design should be beautiful, affordable, flexible and it was always plus if it could be prefabricated.
"what works is better than what looks good. the looks good can change, but what works, works." charles eames
ray kicked the bucket exactly 10 years, to the day, after charles.
they worked with molded plywood, like i said earlier, fiberglass, plastic resin and wire mesh when making furniture. they didn't stop at furniture though, charles and ray made short films such as "the powers of 10" and "mathematica: a world of numbers and beyond", textiles and children's toys.
oh, i want to make it clear that both charles and ray worked equally on almost all of the work we've seen from them but charles usually got all of the credit because it made their work more reputable and he was a man and that's simply how things were.
i would have put up more photos of their work but i really just want you to love THEM. google image search "eames" and you'll find all the beautiful design you'll ever need.
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