Charles Eames was born in 1907 in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA. He studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis and opened his own architecture practice with Charles M. Gray in 1930. In 1935, he opened another architecture studio with Robert T. Walsh, and in 1938 he received a fellowship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he taught design a year later. In 1940, together with Eero Saarinen, he won first prize in the Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition in New York, USA, and became head of the Department of Industrial Design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 1941, he married Ray Kaiser.
Ray Eames was born Bernice Alexandra Kaiser in 1912 in Sacramento, California, USA. She studied painting at the May Friend Bennett School in Millbrook, New York, USA. Until 1937, she took painting classes at the Hofmann School, and in 1937 she took part in the first exhibition of American Abstract Artists at the Riverside Museum in New York. In 1940, she enrolled at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and in 1941 she married Charles Eames.
From 1941 to 1943, Charles & Ray Eames developed designs for stretchers and leg splints made of moulded plywood, and in 1946 they presented an exhibition of moulded plywood designs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After this, Herman Miller in Zeeland, Michigan, USA, began producing Eames furniture designs. In 1948, Charles & Ray Eames took part in the Museum of Modern Art's "Low-Cost Furniture" competition in New York, and in 1949 they built their "Eames House". From around 1955, they also worked extensively as photographers and filmmakers, and in 1964 Charles received an honorary doctorate from the Pratt Institute in New York. In 1964–65, they were responsible for the IBM Pavilion at the World's Fair in New York, and in 1969 they took part in the exhibition "Qu'est-ce que le design?" at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France. In 1970–71, Charles held the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University, and in 1973 Charles and Ray were represented with the exhibition "Furniture by Charles Eames" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Charles Eames died in Saint Louis in 1978; Ray Eames died in 1988.
For Vitra, meeting Charles & Ray Eames was of fundamental importance. The company's history as a furniture manufacturer began in 1957 with the production of their designs. But Charles & Ray Eames shaped Vitra not only through their products. Their understanding of design has had a decisive influence on the company's values and direction to this day.
