--- title: Charles and Ray Eames: Photos of the Legendary Designers in 1950 description: In the centennial of Ray Eames's birth, LIFE offers a series of pictures made in 1950 at the now-legendary Eames House. canonical: https://time.com/3754246/charles-and-ray-eames-simply-genius/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-12-15T15:47:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:04:55.900Z og:title: Charles and Ray Eames: Photos of the Legendary Designers in 1950 og:description: In the centennial of Ray Eames's birth, LIFE offers a series of pictures made in 1950 at the now-legendary Eames House. og:url: https://time.com/3754246/charles-and-ray-eames-simply-genius/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd889dc88af0ef913/698784bba988cabd3a6ad093/150323-charles-ray-eames-04.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Charles and Ray Eames, 1950 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Charles and Ray Eames: Photos of the Legendary Designers in 1950 twitter:description: In the centennial of Ray Eames's birth, LIFE offers a series of pictures made in 1950 at the now-legendary Eames House. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd889dc88af0ef913/698784bba988cabd3a6ad093/150323-charles-ray-eames-04.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Charles and Ray Eames: Simply Genius by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Dec 15, 2012 3:47 PM UTC  Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950. Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Dec 15, 2012 3:47 PM UTC Some things designed and built by our fellow humans are so much a part of our visual landscape that, even if they haven’t been around forever, it takes an effort of will to imagine a world without them. Several Apple products come to mind. The Brooklyn Bridge. The 1956 Corvette convertible (preferably candy-apple red … but any color will do). These and so many other marvels of imagination and execution offer us a glimpse of that ideal world where form and function merge into a seamless — and occasionally breathtaking — whole. They are tools that are works of art. And vice versa. And then there are those quieter, simpler, but no less-beautiful items (or their knock-offs and imitators) that are also, seemingly, everywhere and that somehow we so seldom really _see._ We take them for granted not only because they’re ubiquitous, but because they do exactly what they’re meant to do without calling attention themselves. Case in point: the Eames molded-plywood LCW (“Lounge Chair Wood,” below), with a silhouette so familiar that it might have been there, in our collective field of vision, forever. Considering its organic lines, so pure that they have about them an air of inevitability, the “Eames chair” — as it has long been known — might have been carved into existence around the same time as, say, the buttes of Monument Valley. In reality, the famed husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames (rhymes with “dreams”) introduced the chair in the 1940s, and followed it up with a slew of other mid-century design and architecture icons, including their leather-and-molded-plywood lounge chair and ottoman; the IBM pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair; and their own lovely, perfectly Modernist California home, Eames House (1949).  PETER STACKPOLE PETER STACKPOLE Few design studios of the past 100 years can lay claim to as many innovations and as many influential creations as the practice that Charles and Ray ran for decades: the celebrated Eames Office. Here, in the centennial of Ray Eames’s birth (she was born Dec. 15, 1912, in Sacramento, Calif.), LIFE.com offers a series of pictures — many of which were not published in LIFE — made in 1950 by photographer Peter Stackpole at the newly built Eames House. Today, the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is an official National Historic Landmark. Back then, it was just another intriguing design by a man and woman who, in many ways, were literally helping to shape the second half of the 20th century. As LIFE told its readers in the September 1950 issue, in which some of these pictures first ran: --- > “” --- Of the now-legendary 20th-century design object, the Eames chair, which Eames first introduced in 1946, LIFE wrote that its “popularity started slowly, then snowballed until it is now selling at the remarkable rate of 3,00 a month… A vague businessman, Eames does not know how much the chair has made for him… Eames is so interested making the products of his drawing board available at the lowest coast that the modest retail price of his newest chair ($32.50) bothers him \[and\] he guilty feels that it should sell for less.” --- > “” --- Happy 100th birthday, Ray Eames. LIFE might have focused almost entirely on your husband back in 1950, but rest assured: these days, whenever the 20th century’s most significant designers are discussed, you always get equal billing. No one ever deserved it more. Eames chair photo: Peter Stackpole—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at_ [_@LizabethRonk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Ray Eames at home in California, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Charles Eames ... earnest, reticent, eternally bow-tied man of 43\. Decoration on heating duct at left is a piece of Eames whimsy. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Interior view shows living room's 17-foot-high ceiling, unadorned steel-truss construction, to which Eames clamps lamps for varied lighting effects. He puts up the pilings from an old pier outside the door because he liked their looks. He similarly suspended a Chinese owl kite and toy French horn from the ceiling. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Eames House, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Natural designs embodied in Mojave desert plants fascinate Eames, who likes to mount them on the wall of his studio. From them, he says he gets ideas for his own designs. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Eames-designed chairs, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Ray Eames at home in California, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. New toy, a part of which he is spinning here, was designed by Eames of colored cardboard sections which are easily joined by a child to form odd shapes. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Eames-designed (and decorated) chair, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Eames-designed (and decorated) chair, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Charles Eames with a chair he designed and decorated, California, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Ray Eames at home in California, 1950. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Exterior view of Charles Eames house, showing how it nudges into a hillside. 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