Charles and Ray Eames

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Charles and Ray Eames

The Official page of designers Charles and Ray Eames.

The Eames Office is dedicated to communicating, preserving, and extending the work of the legendary husband-and-wife design team, Charles and Ray Eames.

08/21/2026

On August 21, 1978, Charles passed away. Ten years later, on the same date in 1988, Ray Eames followed.

Together, Charles and Ray spent a lifetime working with curiosity, rigor, and a deep sense of play—qualities that shaped everything from furniture and exhibitions to films and toys.

Seen here working on the Solar Do-Nothing Machine, they remind us that play was never separate from serious work. For the Eameses, it was often where the best ideas began.

Today, we remember Charles and Ray, and the remarkable life of work they created together.

📷: © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

08/19/2026

Five Toys by Charles and Ray Eames: Part 5, The Solar Do-Nothing Machine

Sometimes the name of an design only tells part of the story.

The Solar Do-Nothing Machine was commissioned by the Aluminum Company of America in 1957. Its small aluminum parts were cut, turned, brushed, anodized, dyed, and lacquered entirely inside the Eames Office. It was a machine with “nothing” as its intended output—all it appeared to do was absorb the sun and whirl and twirl its numerous parts.

Charles described the challenge with characteristic precision: “We decided to make a device that will do nothing. But the answer is not as simple as that. What kind of a nothing? You can do nothing in a Baroque way. You can do it in a Gothic way. If you are not careful, you will wind up with a kind of hodge-podge nothing, a big splatter of schmaltz.”

But the Solar Do-Nothing Machine didn’t really do nothing. Using photovoltaic cells, it converted sunlight into electricity to power a series of motors and moving displays—one of the earliest uses of solar electricity and a playful demonstration of solar energy as a practical source of power.

As Charles said of toys more broadly, “Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are precursors to serious ideas.”

📸 © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

08/18/2026

Five Toys by Charles and Ray Eames: Part 4, House of Cards

Just like The Toy, the Eames House of Cards is a set of component parts that are endlessly adaptable. Each deck: fifty-four cards. Six slots each. Countless configurations.

The House of Cards, first produced in 1952, came in two decks: a “Pattern Deck” featuring mostly geometric patterns and textures, and a “Picture Deck” featuring a rich assortment of photographs from the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms on one side and an asterisk (used as the current Eames Office logo) on the other.

The slotted edges allow the cards to lock into one another to build open, three-dimensional structures. Each card was a small act of curation. As they are assembled, the images allow users to create both visual and physical connections.

The House of Cards is the philosophy in miniature: simple, open-ended, democratic, and beautiful. It teaches structure through play and, instead of telling you what to build, gives you the pieces and steps back.

📸 © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

08/17/2026

Five Toys by Charles and Ray Eames: Part 3, Carton City

What happens to the box after the design inside it has been unpacked? For Charles and Ray Eames, it could become a playhouse.

The heavyweight cardboard cartons used to ship the Eames Storage Units were designed for a second life. Each came with “How to Make a Playhouse” instructions, with dotted lines showing where parents and children could cut windows, canopy awnings, and a door. With a few simple modifications, the packaging that protected an Eames design became something children could inhabit, decorate, and transform through play.

In 1951, Charles and Ray took the idea even further, building a miniature cardboard village for children near the Eames Office parking lot. They called it Carton City. Its young residents played in and around cardboard houses and shops along streets named Eames Alley and Miller Street, complete with stop signs, miniature landscaping, and Eames children’s stools used as benches.

📸 © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

08/16/2026

Five Toys by Charles and Ray Eames: Part 2, The Toy

What if a child could build a structure big enough to actually play inside?

That was the idea behind The Toy, released in 1951 and inspired in part by the work of friend Buckminster Fuller, best known for popularizing lightweight dome structures built from interlocking geometric forms. The Eames Office was exploring ideas about modular construction during this period—shortly after the construction of the Eames House—and that thinking is evident in The Toy’s configurable, structural logic.

The Toy is a geometric building kit made from square and triangular panels in six colors, connected by wooden dowels and pipe cleaners. Assemble them into a small tent, a room-sized fort, or even a hanging sculpture. Though designed and marketed for children, Charles and Ray never excluded adults from the enjoyment, showing how The Toy could also be used to create sculptural and decorative forms.

With its do-it-yourself approach, The Toy made architecture and modular construction something anyone could participate in. Rather than prescribing a finished result, it gave the user a system and trusted them to decide what it should become.

📸 © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

08/15/2026

Five Toys by Charles and Ray Eames: Part 1, The Eames Masks

The first toys intended to be mass-produced by the Eameses were colorful animal masks that began as props used in theatrical skits. Large, bold, and designed to be worn by adults just as much as children, they were the Eames Office’s first experiment in designing something explicitly for play.

Ray understood color instinctively from her training as an abstract painter. In the Masks, color becomes a form of communication, helping express the feeling and character of each mask.

While they never reached the consumer market, the masks set a precedent that would run through much of the work that followed: good design is inclusive. It doesn’t distinguish between adults and children, or between the serious and the delightful. A well-designed object invites everyone in.

📸 © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

08/14/2026

Charles and Ray believed that a good toy could hold clues to the era in which it was made. And throughout their home and office, toys were ever-present—not simply as decor, but as objects of study, inspiration, and problem-solving.

That fascination also became part of the Eames design catalog, which included plywood animals, colorful masks, building toys, and solar-powered toys. Their surroundings reflected the same curiosity, even including an operational miniature railroad. Toys crossed into other Eames mediums as well, appearing in films such as Traveling Boy, Tops, Toccata for Toy Trains, Parade, and Kaleidoscope Jazz Chairs.

In the toys they collected, made, and filmed, Charles and Ray found design in its purest form. This series traces five Eames toys, and what each one tells us about how the couple thought and worked.

📸 © 2026 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.

07/14/2026

‘The Eames Houses’ is now available.

Published by Phaidon, the book presents the first comprehensive study of Charles and Ray Eames’ residential architecture. Featuring realized, unrealized, and previously unpublished projects from the Office Archive, it traces their vision for adaptable, prefabricated, and human-centered living. https://eames.link/eames-houses

07/10/2026

Congratulations to Eames Demetrios for being recognized on the Wallpaper* USA 400 list alongside so many inspiring American creatives. And thank you for the incredible leadership you provide to the entire community.

As the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, Eames Demetrios directs the Eames Office and chairs the Eames Foundation, which preserves the landmark Eames House. A filmmaker, author and Ted speaker, he also created Kcymaerxthaere – a globe-spanning parallel universe told through 150 bronze markers in 30 countries.  

07/03/2026

As the United States marks 250 years of independence, we’re revisiting one of the Eames Office’s most complex exhibitions.

Created for the American Bicentennial in 1976, The World of Franklin and Jefferson reflected the Eameses’ distinctive approach to storytelling through exhibition design.

Watch to learn more.

📷: © Eames Office, LLC.

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