Charles and Ray Eames: How Wartime L.A. Shaped the Mid-Century Modern setic

During the mid-1990s, while working evenings and weekends on her PhD dissertation on 18th-century Philadelphia, veteran Library of Congress archivist Margaret McAleer found inspiration in what one might consider an unlikely place: the papers of legendary Los Angeles-based, 20th-century designers Charles and Ray Eames.

Ray Eames, who died in 1988, had bequeathed the collection to the library, and McAleer was assigned to organize the manuscript portion of the collection in advance of a 1998 exhibition on the designers.[1] She dove into its endless contents. I was so inspired by their creativity and passion, she noted in a recent interview. They developed unique, fresh perspectives on every topic they explored. It was completely inspiring for my own dissertation. Manuscript Division colleague Tracey Barton, who also worked on the Eames papers, concurs, describing the collection as a wonderland of just all my favorite things in one place. [2]

Seventy-five years ago, after meeting in Michigan at the Cranbook Academy of Arts in 1940, Charles and Ray Eames (husband and wife) arrived in Los Angeles not knowing a soul besides one another. It would be the start of one of the most influential design partnerships in twentieth century American history. Together they helped to define the mid-century modern aesthetic. Go to Ikea and you'll see derivations of their famous Eames chair everywhere; in Househunters episodes their influence can often be seen in the furniture populating various rooms in prospective homes. Every time an aspiring pair of homeowners describes their style as mid-century modern, the Eames played a role.

Tag courtesy of the Charles and Ray Eames Papers, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Not that any of this was preordained. The move to Los Angles was a significant risk. On one hand, while it might have been surprising due to their lack of connections there, notes McAleer, echoing numerous design historians, it also served as the perfect place to start fresh, Barton adds.[3] Charles had neither the college degrees nor the professional credentials necessary for an architecture license, writes Marilyn and John Neuhart. Similarly, Ray had only six years of study with the painter Hans Hoffman. [4] Even without these advantages, Los Angeles and Southern California more generally seemed to be an open canvas upon which the Eames could paint their own future. The influence moved in both directions. The Eameses played a major part in shaping Californian modernism in the 30-odd years they worked there - and California (Los Angeles in particular) was not without its influence on them, asserts Pat Kirkham.[5]

Success did not come immediately and when it did come L.A.'s unique position as both an entertainment capital and the site of a rapidly expanding military-industrial complex would play a key role in bringing the Eameses to prominence. Just as McAleer found in the Eameses unlikely inspiration that spilled into her dissertation, so too did the design couple derive innovation in their furniture designs from the very regimented and standardized military.

The same year the Eames moved to Southern California, the U.S entered World War II. The Army needed plywood gliders for the transportation of soldiers and equipment behind enemy lines and the Navy needed splints for injured sailors. The Eameses' proximity to San Diego via L.A. created the perfect design opportunity. Under the auspices of the Evans Products Company's Molded Plywood Division, the Eames office successfully manufactured 150,000 splints for the Navy. Through this experience, and the manufacture of other, less notable military products, including a blister created but not widely produced for wartime gliders, the Eameses developed a new, innovative process for the industrial manufacturing of plywood while also establishing new relationships in the design world that would bring them to national prominence. To be clear, not all their designs worked or would be widely implemented, the Eames provide a key example of how the public and private sphere are intimately connected.

The Eameses' arrival in Los Angeles coincided with a decades-long military investment in the region. By 1938, 60 percent of U.S. airframe manufacturers resided in Southern California, largely the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas. In addition, the Navy had contributed greatly to San Diego's growth and, to a lesser extent, Long Beach's. [T]he Navy is integrated into this community more completely here than any other American port, noted the San Diego Union in 1934.[6] When the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor drew America into the war, the resulting global conflict covered the [aerospace] industry with gold, writes historian Roger Lotchin. World War II vastly accelerated the coupling of the city with the sword and created the close interdependence of the region upon the complex range of defense economic stimuli. [7]

Indeed, Southern California witnessed a boom in its aircraft and shipbuilding industries; 12 percent of all war orders went to California, notes historian Michael Sherry.[8] From 1941 to 1945, $70 billion in federal funds poured into the Golden State and, as a result, metropolitan San Diego and Los Angeles emerged as the nation's largest urban military industrial complex, points out Gerald D. Nash.[9] Wartime mobilization, which followed the great migration of Midwesterners and Southerners to California during the 1920s and '30s, symbolized the general national shift from east to west. It was as if someone had tilted the country: people, money and soldiers all spilled west, Richard White concluded.[10]

Consciously or not, the Eameses were part of that tilt. On July 5, 1941 they arrived in Los Angeles. Staying at the Highland Hotel in Hollywood for a coup

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