Ray Eames

Ray Kaiser Eames (1912–1988) was an enigma. Known to serve flowers at dinner parties as a visual dessert, her life as a designer began long before she met Charles Eames in 1940 when she began taking classes at Cranbrook. Born in Sacramento, California, she moved to New York after graduating from May Friend Bennett Women’s College in Millbrook, New York. She was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group and displayed work in their groundbreaking 1937 exhibition. This background in abstract painting deeply informed her design and architecture practice. Ray famously said, “I never gave up painting, I just changed my palette.” 

She attended Cranbrook on the advice of an architect friend, Ben Baldwin. Once she attended Cranbrook and met Charles Eames, the two were an unstoppable force in shaping the American midcentury landscape. It is hard to separate the work that the two did because their process was collaborative at its core. Ray was central to the iconic 1947 Eames House that remains a beacon of midcentury modern design to this day. She completed 27 cover designs for Art & Architecture Magazine. Her work was fundamental to film, photography, textile, and furniture design. The prolific impact of Ray Eames is still being established and more on her incredible life can be found in Pat Kirkham’s Charles and Ray Eames, Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995).