Eames – A Quick History in Design

cheap blemish office furniture, modern desks

Not everyone is familiar with the names Charles and Ray Eames but chances are you are familiar with
their work. No other designers in history have had such an impact on the home and office furnishings
that we see today. Their legacy lives on through sleek and comfortable arm chairs, lounges and modern
desks, reception desk etc . So, who were the Eames and how did they change the way we see furniture
forever? Take a quick stroll through the history of furniture design and find out.

When you step into an office, even a well appointed office, the first thing you think of probably won’t be
design, art and history. However, wherever we go there is a story behind each building, the placement
of doors and windows, the choice of carpet, and the furniture placed inside of a space. Even cheap
blemish furniture tells a story that dates back to a designer, a dream and likely smart business. Some
furniture designers find their names listed with the prestigious artists of history. Ray and Charles Eames
are considered to be as pivotal in the development of current furniture designs as Picasso and Dali are to
art, and Mozart and Beethoven are to music.

Until the early 1940’s furniture of all sorts was generally made of heavy hard woods and followed a basic
and practical design blueprint. Any attempts to break out of the mold had not been found successful.
What was being called ‘modern desk’ were really only slightly altered copies of the ‘modern desks’ of
years before. There was no new modern furniture available to the public until around 1943 when
Charles and Ray Eames released their first line of innovative furniture. These furnishings included
streamlined seating that could easily have been confused as abstract sculptures, executive desk that
seemed to defy gravity and shelving units that hinted to Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs in architecture.
The mold was forever broken.

Office chairs prior to 1940, were usually little more than a straight backed oak seat on wheels. After the
Eames got their fingers into office design, the desk chair became somewhere where art, comfort and
practicality all intermingled. By the 1900’s executive desks had also become stagnate as far as design
was concerned. Offices were filled with cookie cutter box shaped desks, and cheap blemish office
furniture. After 1940, executive desk became a status symbol and something to take pride in, thanks to
the Eames’s work.

Today we still see signs of Charles and Ray Eames’s work even in the most ‘traditional’ office. Much of
the clientele seating you find in a well dressed office gets its lines from the 1940’s designs of the Eames.
The office chair so commonly used even in a humble cubicle is a spin off from the 1940’s and 1950’s
creations of Charles and Ray. Thanks to a philosophy that was rooted in both art and usefulness these
brilliant designers opened a window wide and shed some light on an otherwise dark and undiscovered
platform for art. In fact, it was Charles Eames himself that asked the question “Whoever said that
pleasure wasn’t functional?” Thanks to his hard work and imagination, pleasure and function found its
way into the office spaces that we work in today.