Eames House: An Appreciation of the Work of Charles & Ray Eames [Paperback]

James Barkley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2001

Eames House, an appreciation of the work of Charles & Ray Eames is a portfolio style package that includes a 16 page fully illustrated book and 3 perforated & scored model sheets that assemble easily, without cutting or glue, into a model of Charles & Ray Eames' famous house. All come packaged in a matte finish, clear plastic portfolio style envelope.

The book includes over 100, never before published, photographs and illustrations supporting text that examines the innovative way Charles & Ray Eames worked and approached life.

More than an architectural model, the fold-up paper Eames House also includes detailed illustrated views of the interior as well as an accurate recreation of the exterior. Shadows and reflections of the trees and environment surrounding the actual house are also interpreted in this expressive model.

Printed on the highest quality paper in an oversized format - 12.5" wide by 19" tall.

Winner of several awards for it's design, production and content.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A stunning homage to the Eameses. These [model] sheets are quite beautiful...actually, would seem more appropriate framed than assembled". -- Herman Miller Designlink, June 2002

"Included is the kind of toy the designing couple would likely have created themselves". -- Papercity Magazine, July, 2001

From the Publisher

Eames House is, for us, an experiment. We established American Vessel as a company separate from the design company we were already operating, to produce projects we developed in-house. As designers, we were greatly influenced and inspired by Charles & Ray Eames and, although biographical projects were not part of the mission statement for Vessel, we felt an Eames appreciation was an appropriate way to launch this company.

Charles & Ray Eames produced celebrated icons of 20th century design but our interest in Eames work had much less to do with their individual designs as it did with the way they approached working & living and the body of work as a whole being greater, in our view, than the sum of its unquestionably innovative parts.

Also, we wanted to try to preserve an aspect of what Charles & Ray Eames contributed that we felt was being lost. We have tried to make Eames House a sort of graphic portrait of Charles & Ray - the way they looked at work, play and life in general. We tried to pack content into everything and tell as much of the story in the way we designed the pages as in the content of the essay. James Barkley's photographs of the house were made on a visit with Ray Eames in 1985 as she prepared lunch and have become an important document as a portrait of the house when Ray still occupied and cared for it. In the model, we were less interested in creating a traditional architectural model as we were in expressing, in a three dimensional illustration, how the house and it's environment felt in it's prime as the house and studio of it's designers and as their expression of a positive and accessible way of living.

"Eames House" is the subject of this project specifically as well as metaphorically. The house, for us, is the single greatest piece of design they created and it also became synonymous with they way they lived and approached life - a sort of "house that Eames built".

Product Details

• Paperback: 16 pages
• Publisher: Amer Vessel (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970663307
• ISBN-13: 978-0970663306
• Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,278,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Nice and Well Done, January 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Eames House: An Appreciation of the Work of Charles & Ray Eames (Paperback)

...this is the coolest book, i've seen in quite sometime. The book includes 3 pages that make a quick and easy model of the Eames House. Its definetly worth the $... price tag.