How a Radical Nun Became Best Friends with Charles Eames

"What we, who love Immaculate Heart, want for the college is easier to taste then it is to say—" began Charles Eames's plea to the Los Angeles Times imploring the community to save the imperiled institution. The year was 1967 and Los Angeles's most avant-garde art institution was a seminary helmed by the fierce Sister Corita Kent, America's highly unlikely champion of the Pop Art phenomena. The plea continues, "We want these buildings to demand something of those who enter them and to enrich and shelter those who remain within."
Born Frances Elizabeth Kent from Dodge, Iowa, in 1918, Corita Kent, alongside her blood sister, joined Immaculate Heart at the tender age of 18. There, armed with scant resources and little guidance, she took it upon herself to learn serigraphy, or silk-screening—which still had the unseemly connotations of plebeian frugality. This June, roughly 250 of Corita's printswill decamp to the Pasadena Museum of California Art for the largest full-scale retrospective of her work. The exhibition, Someday Is Now, runs until November 1st and will examine the breadth of her work—everything from Brillo pads to the Civil Rights Movement is memorialized—which relied upon a playful juxtaposition of high and low culture.
Often described as a joyful harbinger of Andy Warhol, Sister Corita's vivid work gleefully mixes scripture and lyric, advertorial and religious iconography, and, of course, the looming idea of what's right and wrong. Sister Corita rejected the staunch amorality of post-war art and instead, like Charles and Ray Eames, was consumed by a desire to do the right thing. Often described as her mentor, it was after she met Charles Eames in 1955 that she began to introduce words into her work. Later, she would do small projects for him here and there—a screen-print of a wire chair, the calligraphy on a poster, a studio visit with her students.

Photo of Eames' wire chairs in PMCA's exhibition via Esoteric Survey

Photo via Residence Magazine

Although the exact details of how Sister Corita Kent befriended Charles and Ray Eames, the madcap postwar design couple, are, by now, quite blurry, it's very likely that she was bold and forthright about it: Under the guise of her cheekily titled Great Men Lecture Series, Sister Corita wrote to a cadre of complete strangers— Alfred Hitchcock, John Cage, Buckminster Fuller—and, very simply, asked them to come and help her teach. And, most of them did.
Under Sister Corita's watchful eye, Immaculate Heart became a veritable factory of experimental printmakers, activists, and, as dubbed by Newsweek, "The Modern Nun." In fact, George Nelson reportedly once complained thatthe only thing wrong with Immaculate Heart College was that he couldn't send his son to it.

Photo of Sister Magdalen Mary and Sister Corita Kent via Flickr user Patricksmercy

The Archbishop James McIntyre was not a fan. A precursor to the radical right of the '70s, he often described Corita's work as "weird and sinister." However, it wasn't until 1968 that the Catholic Church gave the seminary an ultimatum—they could rein in artmaking and political demonstration, or dispense of their vows completely. However, by the time the nuns chose to leave and form their own private organization, Sister Corita was long gone. She died in 1986.

by Katherine Wisniewski

Via curbed.com
see: http://curbed.com/archives/2015/06/25/sister-corita-kent-charles-ray-eames-exhibition.php

Eames' Friends: Harry Bertoia

Harry Bertoia (1915-1978) was fascinated by metal. His interest took him from making jewelry to designing furniture to creating sculpture.
His life seemed determined by serendipity. Coming of age in rural Italy in the 1930s, he received the unlikely opportunity to study art in Detroit, where an older brother had immigrated.
Just as unlikely was the offer to morph from a jewelry maker into a furniture designer for Charles and Ray Eames. An offer from another manufacturer brought him to Pennsylvania and gave him the means to leave the commercial world to explore his true love.
This year marks the centennial of his birth, and, to commemorate, his daughter Celia Bertoia has written his biography. In "The Life and Work of Harry Bertoia," she recounts how another chance episode led to the next, and final phase of his life's work.
"He had learned how to weld, and he was always making different wire structures. And he happened to be working with pieces of wire, and, accidentally, one broke off and it hit another couple of rods and made this wonderful pinging sound," she said. "And he thought, if two rods sound like that, I wonder what 10 or 20 or a hundred rods pinging together would sound like?
That was the genesis of Bertoia's sound sculptures.
"He began to make these structures with a flat base and simple vertical rods coming up, that were flexible enough to move in the wind or be touched by fingers and make a chiming sound," his daughter continued.
From the sound sculptures to architectural installations, his early jewelry and his furniture designs, Bertoia was prolific over his long career. But Celia Bertoia said widespread fame was never on his mind.
"He never signed his work and rarely titled his work because he felt his creativity was coming from some divine source outside himself," she said. "He really felt, why should he take credit, when it was from a higher source?"
That can be a problem for curators and collectors.
Lisa Hanover, president of the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, curated a 2013 exhibit called "Harry Bertoia: Structure and Sound."
"People come out of the woodwork when you mention Bertoia. 'I've got a Bertoia. I've got a Bertoia. I RUINED a Bertoia because I didn't know what I had.
"But among the pantheon of American sculptors, he's right up there," Hanover said.
Celia Bertoia hopes to end that anonymity with her book. It lovingly chronicles her father's life, ideas and artwork, with a detailed look at those unique sound sculptures.
"It's not only visual. They're elegant, but it's textural. You feel them with your fingers and it's auditory, you hear the sounds," she said. "And if it's on a wooden floor, you actually feel the vibrations coming through the floor.
"The Life and Work of Harry Bertoia" has been released by Schiffer Publishing. Later this year, Important Records will reissue a series of recordings Harry Bertoia made of his sound sculptures.

By Kimberly Haas

Via newsworks.org

See: www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/arts-culture/83349-daughter-chronicles-bertoias-artistic-journey-from-shaping-metal-to-awakening-its-sound

Corita Kent biblical print has Eames chairs

Bold graphics in shades of pink and lemon yellow. Poetic phrases, borrowed from e.e. cummings and Gertrude Stein. Bits of typography that torque and bend. The survey devoted to the art of Corita Kent at the Pasadena Museum of California Art gathers a lifetime of masterful printmaking by one of the more compelling figures in 20th century art.
Kent was an activist, artist and Catholic nun who shaped a generation of young artists as a professor at the now-closed Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. She also palled around with the likes of composer John Cage and Charles and Ray Eames in the 1960s, appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1967 and went on to inspire art world figures such as Mike Kelley with her wild graphics.
The Pasadena show is especially worthwhile for including some of the earliest works of Kent, who died in 1986. These include colorful religious scenes that the artist made in the early 1950s, when she was fresh out of graduate school.
"This was when she was just getting out of USC," says Michael Duncan, one of exhibition's co-curators. "She was eager to experiment and rattle the cage of traditional religious art. She wanted to do something different than the pretty, pretty pictures that were in Sunday school texts. As she said, she wanted to get away from the 'shampoo-ad Jesus.' "
[Corita Kent] wasn't afraid of mess, ever. This was something she had tried to instill in her students: don't be afraid -- fear shouldn't be part of art-making.- Michael Duncan
During this time, she produced deeply layered prints of traditional religious iconography — Virgin and child, Crucifixion — featuring an array of colors, some embedded with words and letters, all inspired by a range of influences, from Byzantine art to the work of the early 20th century political printmaker Ben Shahn.
One of these pieces is a print she made in 1952 titled "At Cana of Galilee." It depicts the miracle in which Christ turned water into wine. Certainly, it's an abstracted view of the proceedings. The print features layers of orange, pink and purple showing the wedding couple (likely the pair at the bottom) along with silhouettes of revelers, images of chalices and — quite curiously — a repeating image of an Eames chair.
"There's this impulse to speak to a contemporary audience, but she's still holding on to religious graphics," Duncan says. "It shows incredible ambition and excitement in making these things. 'Cana' could have done with a few less screens. It's pretty messy-looking. But it's also intriguing for that reason. ... She wasn't afraid of mess, ever. This was something she had tried to instill in her students: Don't be afraid — fear shouldn't be part of art-making."
Duncan, who has been studying Kent's work since the 1990s and previously curated important traveling shows of her work, says in this untidy, early work that it is possible to see the roots of what she would become known for in the 1960s.
"She becomes a master of color," he explains. "She learns how color works and how it can snap you to attention. Clearly, she's experimenting with that here, with these bright purples and oranges. It's interesting to compare it with the abstract art of the time."
The piece also tells an interesting story of transformation.
"In the story of Cana, Christ turns wine into water," Duncan explains. "It's part a transformation that is so much a part of Christianity and religion in general. Corita was transforming this by putting an Eames chair in there. She's making it modern. Later, she would transform advertising — by taking this cynical mode of communication and turning into something that bore much more profound content.

"It shows her ambition," he says, "a real desire to make something you can immerse yourself in."

By Carolina A. Miranda

Via Los Angeles Times

See: www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-object-lesson-corita-kent-at-cana-of-galilee-eames-chairs-20150623-column.html

Exclusive interview with Daniel Ostroff, author of "An Eames Anthology" (part #2)

(part #1 was published Friday, June 19)

--
Andrea Terranova (Eamesiana):
Today, is there an heir of the Eames ?

Daniel Ostroff:
The Eames grandchildren continue the work of the office, with regard to overseeing the production of authentic Eames furniture worldwide, and a vigorous program of exhibitions, devised "to communicating, preserving, and extending the work of Charles and Ray Eames. 

Last year, the Eames Office collaborated on two major museum exhibitions focused on the life and work of Ray Eames:
http://www.californiamuseum.org/exhibit/ray-eames-century-modern-design-1
and
http://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/ray-eames-in-the-spotlight-2/

Next, they are collaborating on this show, at the Barbican, to open in October in London:
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=17089

AT:
In which design stance today designers (especially young designers) can translate the eamesian's values?

DO:
One answer to this question can be found in the text, "Advice for Students," specifically this passage

Prepare yourself to search out the true need – Physical
                                   Psychological
Prepare yourself to intelligently fill that need
the art is not something you apply to your work
the art is the way you do your work, a result of your attitude toward it
design is a full time job
                                    it is the way you look at politics
                                                                                     funny papers
                                                                                     listen to music
                                                                                     raise children

When I talk with young architecture students who tell me they want to design a chair, I ask them "Why? Does the world really need more chairs?"
When Charles and Ray dedicated themselves to furniture, there was no Ikea. Over time, Charles and Ray did many useful things, not just furniture. This is a real lesson to today's young people.
I wish that today's young designers would "search out the true need(s)" of our time, and apply themselves to solving them.

AT:
What would be your pet item in their catalogue?

DO:
Are you asking me for my favorite one of their works? I would have to say, at this point, their ideas, the texts in this book. In their words, and in their ideas, they provide guidance for today and tomorrow.

AT:
Do you plan to continue working on the Eames in the future? Maybe a movie?

DO:
I will continue to consult for the Eames Office and I do a biweekly blog for them, called "The Details"
You can read several here:
http://www.eamesoffice.com/blog-category/the-details/

I am also working on creating a lot of pages illustrating Eames furniture history on the site.
I am a film producer, and I apply the Eames lessons to my work in film. Making a movie that will connect with an audience should be done with care and attention to detail.
When I work with writers and directors, I often think of this remark by Charles, which is in the handwritten texts on page 149 I believe.
“To know so well what you want to accomplish that there is no pressure to be original—this is a desirable state whether one is designing a toy or writing a play or building a chair.”

You can read about some of my films here
http://danielostroff.com/ under the Daniel Ostroff Productions heading.


--
Thanks to Carol Eisner - book publicist for Yale University Press - we published the exclusive interview that Daniel Ostroff granted to Eamesiana blog. Ostroff is the author of An Eames Anthology (Yale University Press, 2015, 420 pp., ISBN 978-0-300-20345-5 $50.00, available at bookstores, through online booksellers, at yalebooks.com, or by calling Triliteral Customer Service at 1-800-405-1619).

Images: courtesy Rob Payne via robpayne.co.uk

 

Exclusive interview with Daniel Ostroff, author of "An Eames Anthology" (Yale University Press, 2015)

Thanks to Carol Eisner - book publicist for Yale University Press - today we publish the first part of the exclusive interview that Daniel Ostroff granted to Eamesiana blog. Ostroff is the author of An Eames Anthology (Yale University Press, 2015, 420 pp., ISBN 978-0-300-20345-5 $50.00, available at bookstores, through online booksellers, at yalebooks.com, or by calling Triliteral Customer Service at 1-800-405-1619).

Ostroff is the author of Modern Classic, Eames + Valastro, and Collecting Eames. He was consulting curator for Eames Words and curator of Collecting Eames: The JF Chen Collection, both for The Getty Museum's Pacific Standard Time Consortium. He has consulted for The Eames Office, The Museum of California Design, Herman Miller, LACMA and SFMoMA, and others. Ostroff also produces feature films, television, and documentaries.

An Eames anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and Speechesby Charles Eames and Ray Eames"collects for the first time the writings of the esteemed American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, illuminating their marriage and professional partnership of fifty years. More than 120 primary-source documents and 200 illustrations highlight iconic projects such as the Case Study Houses and the molded plywood chair, as well as their work for major corporations as both designers (Herman Miller, Vitra) and consultants (IBM, Polaroid). Previously unpublished materials appear alongside published writings by and about the Eameses and their work, lending new insight into their creative process. Correspondence with such luminaries as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen provides a personal glimpse into the advance of modernity in mid-century America.

Thanks to Carol Eisner, Daniel Ostroff and Rob Payne for images.

*   *   *

The interview:

Andrea Terranova (Eamesiana): 

Through essays, drawings, movies we have now a rich set of tools to understand the work of the Eames. Nevertheless the real secret of their modus operandi is yet to be revealed and with your work you are probably the author that has caught the essence of it. If you were to explain their method of work with a few key words what would be your choice?

Daniel Ostroff:
I hope you do not mind that I quote myself, from my own Introduction, in answer to this question.
For the beginning of a film about their molded plywood chair - the one designated by Time magazine as "the design of the century" - Charles and Ray Eames wrote: “The problem of designing anything is in a sense the problem of designing a tool. And as in designing a tool it is usually wise to have a pretty clear idea of what you want the thing to do. The need it is to fill, its particular objective.”
By approaching their work with this attitude, as simple as it may seem, and by committing themselves to a "nuts and bolts" process, the Eameses had an extraordinary impact on our world. They created a well-documented legacy of architecture, furniture, toys, films, exhibitions, books and graphic design.
The principles of the Eames process that applied with great care and deliberation. Some one else recently asked me about this, and I guess I can add the following statements:
There is something that Charles said that also addresses this question: “The process is always the same.”
In putting this book together, I looked for texts that revealed all of the aspects of the Eames “process.”
These include: “service and performance,” a passionate focus on these aspects of their work products whether they were films, furniture, exhibitions or architecture.
The “look” of their chairs has more to do with this Eames rule—“easily repairable, easily replaceable parts,” than any apparent visual style. In an interview, Charles refutes the idea that there is a “visual” throughline in the Eames work, and most would agree with that. As Eames Demetrios points out in his book, An Eames Primer, "Their La Chaise chair and their ESU were done within two or three years of each other. One is all curves, the other all right angles." But there is a consistency to the straightforward approach to connections, which they did not conceal. No Eames chair is a “black box,” and the idea of “no user serviceable parts” was anathema to them. Even on the Eames Chaise, and on the Eames lounge chair and ottoman zippers are sued so that if the cushions need restuffing, the customer can do that. If the pads need to be removed, you don’t have to take it to an upholsterer, and you can buy replacement pads.
They believed in using “humble materials,” that are plentiful and that have stood the test of time. Charles bragged on the non-revolutionary use of leather and down on the Eames Lounge chair.
When talking about objects or art, or architecture, the highest compliment that Charles and Ray would pay something was that it was “Un-embarrassed and un-self-conscious.” This was true of their own work, it was the ideal to which they aspired. When talking about the Eames aluminum group design process, Charles noted they were on constantly on guard against doing something sculptural. Every part of an Eames work was purposeful, relating to the need it was to fill. Charles and Ray extolled the virtues of tools, and advised young designers to learn from the design of tools.

AT:

The Eameses with their works are great "story tellers" (possibly this one of the reasons of their great success): could you elaborate on that and tell us according to your knowledge of their work what is the “story” that they tell us and the recurring elements of that story?

DO:
By story telling, I am imagining that you refer to their sharing stories about the circumstances by which the great designs and art of the past were created, and how they referenced these in illustrating their principles of design for today and tomorrow.
From the past, and in particular, the "pre-Industrial Age" past, they learned many things, including:
a. That great designs were done by people who were faced with great constraints: no machinery, no technology, no "new materials," and that all design should be done with constraints.
b. That traditional societies produce quality goods, not because they have an art tradition, but because they have a tradition of what is good, and what isn't, which is taught to every one in those societies at a very early age.
They loved 18th Century German Baroque, Pueblo Indian Kachina Dolls, Navaho rugs, the Japanese tea ceremony, American colonial silver, Chartres Cathedral, and much, much more.

AT:

In '50s and '60s most of the critics - with the exception of Paul Schrader - have underrated Charles and Ray’s movies: what is your "professional" opinion about ?

DO:
It's probably because, as Charles said,
"They’re not experimental films, they’re not really films. They’re just attempts to get across an idea."
Most professionals in film use film to tell stories. When you consider Hollywood films, on a basic level, there's not much different between a Hollywood movie and 2000 years of Greek drama. Charles and Ray saw film as a means of communication, and used it that way, and most people expect movies to be "stories."

(… to be continued on next monday)

Happy Birthday Charles Eames

Today Charles Eames would have turned 108. In honor of Charles Eames’ birthday, we’ve rounded up some videos: produced by the Eames themselves, HOUSE (a tour of their home) and Powers of Ten (their 1977 exploration of the universe’s magnitudes), this 1956 clip of the pair’s first TV appearance, a video of the construction of the Shell Chair and, at the Vitra Campus, the Eames Lounge, the TED Talk delivered by the pair’s grandson, and the trailer to The Architect & The Painter (the must-watch documentary on the pair’s lives). See all the videos after the break!

Courtesy: Eames Office

Waiting for the anniversary: Charles Eames - June 17

Charles Eames at Pacific Palisades, Venice (Cal.), 1949

Paul Schrader on Charles Eames

In 1970, Charles Eames gave a talk at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In the audience that day was a passion and hungry 24-year-old man, eager to be inspired, and ready to give the world a taste of all that stirred inside him. That young man was the now-iconic writer and director Paul Schrader, who has attributed Eames—the architect, problem-solver, and all around Renaissance man—as the reason he was able to become a filmmaker. After taking in his speech, Schrader was compelled to write an article on the artist, and as he said in Kevin Jackson’s "Schrader on Schrader & Other Writings", “even the notion of an article was a rouse because I sensed that here was this person standing by a door, and if I approached him, he would open that door for me.” And fatefully, he did. Schrader conducted the interview—which eventually expanded farther than he could have anticipated—after visiting Eames’ famously thriving workshop in Venice and never wanting to leave.
After spending his early twenties writing film criticism and aspiring to make films of own, Schrader was hovering around Hollywood, unsettled by the films presented to him. What he saw were pictures that “exalted idiosyncrasy and the cult of personality,” focusing on me and not we, highlighting the importance of individuality as a means of understanding oneself on a greater level. However, through his time spent admiring Eames and learning from his work, Schrader came to find a person who exposed him that to the idea that the cult of personality was in fact ephemeral, flowing from one person to the next, uniting humanity with a deeper kind of likeness.
Schrader claims it was that sentiment, combined with the thought that “images are ideas,” which overturned his world. The article he wrote on Eames would be published in Film Quarterly in the Spring of 1970, and was titled “Poetry of Ideas.” The focus was on Eames’ short films created with his wife, Ray, and how they exemplified something entirely unique to the cinematic tradition. Amalgamating science and technology to convey their own means of communication, Schrader said the films possessed a “unified aesthetic with many branch-like manifestations,” and that they had a “cerebral sensibility” seldom seen in the medium.
Classified as his “toy films” and his “idea films,” Eames revealed both the “definitive characteristics of commonplace objects” and “introduced a new way of perceiving ideas into a medium which had been surprisingly anti-intellectual.” Since his earliest work, Schrader has been a writer and filmmaker who has unified both an intellectual sensibility through prose with aesthetically-rich ways to convey narrative ideas.
Jackson noted that Schrader’s “most mature films—following Eames—aspire to the condition of poetry.” But whereas Eames’ response to being referred to as a filmmaker—and someone Schrader had taken a cinematic interest in initially—was,”Who me, film?”, Schrader has always been obsessed with an “evangelical impulse to preach” his ideas to an audience. It’s his cri de coeur, he’s said, “that need to just lean out the window and yell.” And with his first major directorial work in five years, The Canyons, premiering this week, it’s compelling to look back on the beginnings of his career to understand the director he has become today. Below are some of Eames’ short films that inspired Schrader and changed his world. You can read the article in its entirety HERE.

Courtesy: www.bbook.com

News: Eames House in Deyan Sudjic's "Fifty Modern Buildings That Changed the World"

For the newest installment in its colorful “Fifty” book series, the London Design Museum takes on the world of contemporary architecture. In "Fifty Modern Buildings That Changed the World" (Conran, $20), museum director Deyan Sudjic offers a lushly illustrated cross section of design from 1851 to the present. The chronology starts with Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace and ends with David Adjaye’s yet-to-be-completed National Museum of African American History and Culture, stopping at greats such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Eames House in Venice, along the way.

"Fifty Modern Buildings" will be released on July 7.
Via: architecturaldigest.com
Read all at: www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2015/06/modern-architecture-design-museum

Courtesy: Conran 

News: Eames Rocking Chair wall mural

"If you want to really inject personality into your home, forget block colour feature walls and go for a detailed mural to show off your style, interests and hobbies in the biggest and boldest way possible.
Covering a large wall space with one epic piece of art can really lift a room and it will easily become a focal point of your bedroom, living room or kitchen. Tiny, obscure details in your print can also be a real talking point - and you might find that however many times you take a look, you will always come across a new intricate detail in the design.
If you're up for going large on your walls, here is one unusual way to do it".

Via: http://www.housetohome.co.uk/articles/news/7-ingenious-wall-murals-you-ll-love_533110.html

News from Milano Salone del Mobile 2015

Heath released a series of handcrafted clay tile House Numbers using fonts created by Charles and Ray Eames. Ceramics numbers are created by Heath in collaboration with famed type foundry House Industries. Like all Heath products, the House Numbers are subject to a refreshingly folksy, holistic, and low-impact (Heath’s clay bodies require just one low-temperature firing instead of the normal two, saving precious energy and resources) manufacturing process that has pretty much remained the same since the company was founded in the mid-1940s.

Courtesy: www.heathceramics.com

Memo: Connect Everything

Charles Eames said, "Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects, etc....the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se." The Eames office had a diagram that explained their approach to practice. There were three overlapping circles. One represented the interests of the design office. One represented the interests of the client. And one represented the interests of society as a whole. Their work, the Eames said, was at the intersection of the three.Yet this intersection implied a business model: you needed clients. And those clients would pay you a fee to pursue things that interested them, the design office, and, ideally, society as a whole. The Eames had the luxury of choice. Their talent provided them with opportunities that ensured that the overlap stayed in line with their own interests.

Courtesy: Work of Charles and Ray Eames/Library of Congress/Prints & Photographs Division

Design’s Best-Kept Secret: Eames Radios

By James Gaddy

Wall Street Journal - www.wjs.com

May 28, 2015

Is there anything about the work of Charles and Ray Eame sthat hasn’t already been exhaustingly dissected? Surprisingly, yes: the Eameses used their revolutionary bent-plywood process for geekier projects as well: radios.
These little-known artifacts, which date from the mid- to late-1940s, are among the Eameses’ earliest experiments with their plywood-molding process. During World War II, the U.S. Navy had commissioned the couple to develop leg splints, a task which led to a breakthrough: a method of creating multiple curves in wood to better fit the human form. “ Alvar Aalto and Marcel Breuer were both able to bend wood in two directions, but Charles and Ray figured out how to do it using compound curves,” explained Daniel Ostroff, editor of the new book “An Eames Anthology” (Yale University Press), a trove of rarely seen photographs, correspondence, notes and articles. After the release of Eameses’ then-radical LCW chair, electronics manufacturers such as Emerson, Magnavox, and Bendix, among others, realized the process could be adapted to make radio housings that were more durable, affordable and lighter than the plastic ones widely in use.
The Eameses worked on a range of technology during their career. In 1972, they created a whimsical 10-minute video for Polaroid to market its new instant film. They also designed a modernist speaker system for the high-end audio company Stephens, and had a long relationship with IBM, creating films and exhibitions that helped humanize computing technology.
What made the duo unique, said Mr. Ostroff, was that they applied their credo—“the best for the most for the least”—to every project, whether high- or low-tech. “They felt that if they couldn’t figure out the manufacturing process, they had no business designing it,” he said.
That’s perhaps what gave the Eames radios their understated elegance—a quality that effectively seduced Justin Hoffman, a vintage furniture dealer in Berkeley, Calif., who has bought nearly 25 models. His first, a Zenith 6D030, was “a little beat up but had such an interesting look to it,” he said.
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The estimated 200,000 of these radios that were manufactured are enjoying a strong second (and third) life on the auction circuit as an unexpected way for the design-savvy to own an Eames original. Many sell for around $1,000. The priciest one, a mint-condition prototype that never went into production, went for $17,500 two years ago, according to Wright auction house founder Richard Wright. On September 10, Wright will hold its largest auction of Eames furniture, with nearly 300 lots. Seven lots will be Eames radios, the largest offering at auction.
“They’re not the most beautiful Eames products,” admitted Mr. Ostroff, but he added that the radios are among the most delicate pieces the Eameses ever produced. And the pleasures of owning one can go beyond mere aesthetics. Mr. Hoffman said his first acquisition was still functioning. “It was something from 1946 that still picked up local radio stations. I thought that was so cool,” he said.

From left: Zenith Radio 1946; Eames Office Radio for Emerson; Zenith Radio 6D030Z.

Courtesy photo F. Martin Ramin / The Wall Street Journal