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Charles And Ray Kaiser: Museum Of Modern Art

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Ray Kaiser was born in Sacramento, California in 1912. She attended the Art Students League and the Hans Hoffman School in New York where she studied painting. In 1936, Ray was involved in the creation of the radical American Abstract Artist group, which would protest art galleries with very strict rules about what to exhibit, and would do many other things to help abstract artists. ("Charles & Ray Eames - R & Company.") She was very active and was one of the first participants of American-Born abstract artists. ("The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of InventionBiography.") She Left New York in 1940 to study at Cranbrook but was only there for a short time because she met Charles and they were soon married and then they both moved …show more content…

("Charles and Ray | Eames Office.") Together this husband and wife team helped change American life. Their work in the fields of architecture, furniture, textile design, and others helped change the visuals in everyday America. The focus of their designs was to create pieces that had many different functions. This all began with their win of the Museum of Modern Art’s “organic design in home furnishings” competition and continued into many of their future designs in furniture. The idea of the molded plywood chair was what the couple was really trying to perfect. It was seen as an affordable and functional piece of modern furniture. In 1941 the couple moved to Los Angeles where they continued to influence the field of design. Initially, Charles worked in movies, and Ray worked for the journal California Arts and Architecture, creating cover pages. The Eames continued working with the molded plywood furniture idea, and they even created a machine to create this new form of furniture. This machine, however, never produced satisfactory results. The work that the Eames were doing was …show more content…

Thy applied the technique used for molding plywood and started using fiberglass to create cheap shell chairs. Charles and Ray continued to create many other designs for furniture involving products such as aluminum and plywood, and have left a lasting impression on the field of furniture design, but they worked in many other fields of design. Ray began creating patterned textiles with designs that she would hand draw repeating geometric shapes. After their success in the furniture industry, Charles used his architecture degree to get the couple involved in the postwar housing demand. The couple designed homes for a project sponsored by the California Arts and Architecture magazine. These homes were called case study homes, and the goal of these homes was to allow young architects to design and build these case study homes. These homes were built during the great depression, and Charles and Ray used only industrial parts that were in excess to create their home. Their home is one of these case study homes, the eighth one to be exact, and it was built in Pacific Palisades, California during the year 1951. The design of their house even influenced modern architecture, with its double high ceilings, and its use of traditional building materials. The house was a personification of how the family lived, and surprisingly it

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