Persons [ ] The Connections / Design / Architecture / Furniture / Films & Toys | Charles & Ray Eames, 1907-88

Charles &  Ray Eames

“Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”

“I don’t believe in this ‘gifted few’ concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing.
They have a way of getting good at whatever it is.”

“I came to design through architecture, Ray came to design through painting. This should not be at all surprising since I feel that most everything is a form of architecture, certainly all of the environment that man creates for himself – and Ray feels that painting is related to everything and of course I feel that  painting comes under the heading of architecture.”

“You can be an artist in any field, but getting a degree to call yourself an artist would be like getting a diploma to call yourself a genius. If your work is good enough, it can be art, but art isn’t a product. It’s a quality. Sometimes that’s lost sight of. Quality can be in anything.”

Charles and Ray Eames

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”

“The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections,
the connections. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life.”

“Any time one or more things are consciously put together in a way that they can accomplish something better than they could have accomplished individually, this is an act of design.”

“The most important thing is that you love what you are doing, and the second that you are not afraid of where your next idea will lead.”

Charles &  Ray Eames

“Here is more than a prediction–but a sincere hope that tomorrow’s design will see less and less of the designer himself reflected in it.”

“Unlike Keats, who said that knowing about the rainbow shatters its beauty, I feel that the knowledge about an object can only enrich your feelings for the object itself.”

“Choose Your Corner, Pick Away At It Carefully, Intensely, & To The Best Of Your Ability, & That Way, You Might change The World.”

“The same stars that shine down on Russia shine down on the United States. From the sky, our cities would look much the same.”

“Beyond the age of information, there is the age of choices.”

Charles & Ray Eames

“Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to others in the things you make.”

“In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.”

“The panic to be original is one of the evidences of a lack of knowledge.”

“Innovate as a last resort. More horrors are done in the name of innovation than any other.”

“Most people aren’t trained to want to face the process of re-understanding a subject they already know. One must obtain not just literacy,  but deep involvement and re-understanding.”

Charles and Ray Eames, 1941

Ray (Bernice Alexandra) Kaiser (1912-88) was born in Sacramento, California, and trained as a painter, studying in New York under the  avant-garde artist Hans Hofmann. She had a keen interest in modern dance, attending classes led by Martha Graham, and was a founding member
of American Abstract Artists.

Charles Eames (1907-78) was born in St Louis, Missouri. He demonstrated an interest in photography from an early age before going on to  study architecture and developing skills in lithography and etching, as well as in building and design.