Collection: Charles Eames & Eero Saarinen

Charles Eames, born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1930 he opened his first architectural practice together with Charles M. Gray. In 1935 he established a second studio with Robert T. Walsh. In 1938 he received a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he began teaching design a year later. From 1940, he headed the Department of Industrial Design at the same academy.

Eero Saarinen, born in 1910 in Kirkkonummi, Finland, was the son of architect Eliel Saarinen. He studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and later architecture at Yale University in New Haven. A scholarship allowed him to travel through Europe before returning to the United States in 1936. He joined his father’s architectural practice and also taught at the Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills.

There he met Charles Eames. Together they began experimenting with new furniture forms, leading to the first designs in moulded plywood.

In 1940, Eames and Saarinen won first prize in the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.