Ray Eames Biography
Ray Eames was born Bernice Alexandra Kaiser, but in 1954 she legally changed her name to Ray Bernice Alexandra Kaiser. She graduated from the May Friend Bennet School in Millbrook, New York as a very creative woman in 1933.
Ray Eames joined Hans Hoffmann’s school to study painting and took weaving classes as well. At the first American Abstract Art’s group show in New York, Ray Eames exhibited her painting work in 1937. As the Head of the industrial D
esign Department at Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Michigan, Charles Eames met Ray Kaiser when she enrolled to study weaving at the same Academy.
Married to another woman at the time, Charles got divorced and married Ray Kaiser a year later in Chicago. After their marriage, they moved to California where they started designing and experimenting on improving the methods of moulding plywood. Ray Eames is sometimes mistaken for Charles’s brother because of the name Ray, especially in written form.
Ray Eames was involved in film industry and designed furniture as well as textiles along with Charles. The two of them are responsible for the new designs of furniture we see today. They were a fun couple and were continually experimenting with new technology as well as products. They were determined to change the furniture design of those days to what we have today.
Ray Eames along with her husband Charles are responsible for the single piece chair that was made out of fibreglass material. Motivated by trays, animal traps, baskets as well as dress forms they experimented with bent and welded wire mesh as the basis for their furniture designs. Using a uni-shell design, the wire-mesh chair was similar to the fibreglass chair. The advantage of the shell was that it could be easily moulded to various base configurations as well as the different upholstery types.
The moment the new concept got fully grasped, ingenious techniques were used to mass-produce the relevant upholstery, with special moulds created as forms over which to weld the wire shells. Ray Eames with Charles adapted a resistant-welding technique used for making drawers. This idea made them develop a new method for reinforcing the shell’s rim with a double band of wire. It is this idea that helped Ray Eames and Charles come up with the mass-production of the single shell fibreglass plastic chairs.
Apart from creating the single shell fibreglass plastic chair, the Eames’ were commissioned to design and produce chairs for virtually all places where chairs were needed such as airports, offices, stadiums, schools as well as all other public places. This just shows how popular both Ray and Charles were as far as furniture designers go, as well as where other architectural designs were concerned.
Both Ray Eames and Charles left a legacy in the world of furniture design, as they are both deceased. The Eames house became one of America’s National Historic Landmarks, as well as being added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 20th 2006.
The same house is considered an architectural iconic structure as well as a must see for all architects as well as designers.