Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just doing our
Speaker 2: usual chatting it up here on the podcast that we
Speaker 2: like to call stuff you should that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited about this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is your pick, right.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, this is one I've been wanting to do
Speaker 1: for a long time.
Speaker 2: Well, here we are, Charles, here we are. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: glad you're excited. I'm excited too. It's a pretty cool topic.
Speaker 2: The Eames, Charles and Ray Eames, Ray and Charles Eames.
Speaker 2: Depending on how you want to say, it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: because any way you slice it, they were equals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, if you don't know who we're
Speaker 1: talking about, we should probably say so right off the
Speaker 1: bat they are, or I guess they should say we're
Speaker 1: a married couple who kind of I don't know if
Speaker 1: they changed the face of design, but they were certainly
Speaker 1: very influential and design and you know all they did
Speaker 1: all kinds of things in their career, but what they're
Speaker 1: most known for is their design of simple, eye pleasing
Speaker 1: and back then affordable furniture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not even sure it was particularly affordable back then,
Speaker 2: but that was definitely their goal. They wanted to make
Speaker 2: the best for the most, for the least. They really
Speaker 2: tied into the ethos that they were working in, which
Speaker 2: was immediately post war economic boom America.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw that there. And this was in their
Speaker 1: great documentary Eames Colon, The Architect and the Painter from
Speaker 1: twenty eleven filmmakers Jason Kohne and Bill Jersey. I've seen
Speaker 1: it twice. Now.
Speaker 2: That's an American Masters one, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think picked it up, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it originally was. But I'm not sure. But
Speaker 1: I saw it back in twenty eleven, I guess, and
Speaker 1: then watch it again yesterday and today. But they said
Speaker 1: that it was, you know, definitely sort of middle to
Speaker 1: upper middle class people were who could afford to buy
Speaker 1: their stuff at the time. But it wasn't for the
Speaker 1: lofty super rich.
Speaker 2: Right, But it also wasn't for your average Joe Schmoe
Speaker 2: with a mortgage and all that.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, all some stuff was okay.
Speaker 2: So you said that they didn't necessarily change the face
Speaker 2: of design.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not one hundred percent sure. I guess looking back
Speaker 2: with hindsight, the way that people treat them today, they're
Speaker 2: revered like gods. Yeah, for sure, But I guess maybe
Speaker 2: at the time contemporaneously they were part of a larger push.
Speaker 2: Like they worked with Aerosarinin he was a huge, hugely
Speaker 2: influential architect and designer. They worked to Charles Nelson, a
Speaker 2: hugely influential designer. They were part of like this vanguard,
Speaker 2: I guess of you modernist design again, using kind of
Speaker 2: like industrial readily available, mass producible materials, but applying really
Speaker 2: really like legitimately artistic talent and vision and design to
Speaker 2: the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I had no idea until just now that
Speaker 1: Charles Nelson Riley also worked in design.
Speaker 2: He did. He said, I can't even do it. I
Speaker 2: can't do it in person. You me probably could. One
Speaker 2: of our dogs is named Charlie, named after Charles Nelson
Speaker 2: Riley when she was a kid.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean, if that's not a joke, for
Speaker 1: I mean, gen X is the low end of that joke.
Speaker 2: Did you see his One man Show? No, they did
Speaker 2: a documentary of his One Man's Show that he did
Speaker 2: before his death. And it's good, very touching, poignant, like
Speaker 2: Charles Nelson Riley with a little bit of his guard down.
Speaker 1: M I'd like to see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, check it out. But let's say we go back
Speaker 2: to the beginning and we'll let everybody else decide whether
Speaker 2: they change the face of design or not.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll start with well, let's start with Bernice
Speaker 1: Alexandra Kaiser, and we were like, who the heck is
Speaker 1: that her family called her re Ray and that eventually
Speaker 1: just got shortened.
Speaker 2: To Ray got sick of that hyphen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She was born in Sacramento in nineteen twelve, and
Speaker 1: she ended up being interested in a lot of things,
Speaker 1: as did her future husband Charles, but she was largely
Speaker 1: an artist and largely a painter, even though she was
Speaker 1: into engineering and obviously design and all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: like that, But she was basically a painter and would
Speaker 1: eventually study under a gentleman named Hans Hoffmann, very famous
Speaker 1: German expressionist, and was a bit of a rabble rouser
Speaker 1: in the art community early on, and that she was like,
Speaker 1: she was in a group called American abstract artists that
Speaker 1: would do things like Pickett if they didn't you know,
Speaker 1: have art shows that represented different kinds of artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently militancy toward modernist ideas was kind of a
Speaker 2: through thread for people who were into modernism, like they
Speaker 2: really were in the face of tradition and bucking that
Speaker 2: whole thing, and part of that was kind of like
Speaker 2: a militant approach to it, which I guess includes picketing
Speaker 2: art galleries. Right, yeah, but she was part of that
Speaker 2: movement before Pollock and d'cooning. Is it to coooning or cooning?
Speaker 1: I think it's decooning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before those guys, even like a decade before those
Speaker 2: guys came into it, she was part of like that
Speaker 2: first wave. So yeah, she was legit abstract artists. And
Speaker 2: then her husband was born five years previously, I think
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh seven in Saint Louis, Missouri. Just missed
Speaker 2: the World's Fair. Oh when was that nineteen oh four?
Speaker 1: Wow, well he might have gone.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen meet me in Saint Louis?
Speaker 1: Oh wait years three years prior? Sorry, that would be impossible, right,
Speaker 1: I was like, they could have taken a three year old, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But they couldn't have taken a negative three year old.
Speaker 1: I know they tried.
Speaker 2: I guess technically, I guess they did if that sperm
Speaker 2: had just stayed in the same place and that was
Speaker 2: the same page and they just were frozen in time
Speaker 2: essentially reproductively.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yeah.
Speaker 2: At any rate. He was born in Saint Louis in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh seven and he wanted to be an architect,
Speaker 2: essentially out of the gate. He studied architecture at Washington
Speaker 2: University in Saint Louis and he got kicked out. He
Speaker 2: left Slash got kicked out after about two years of
Speaker 2: study because he was also a militant modernist and at
Speaker 2: the time the training he was receiving was not so
Speaker 2: I described as bos art and it was not modernist
Speaker 2: at all, and they were like, get out of here,
Speaker 2: you hippie bozo. So he did.
Speaker 1: He did not stop him though, he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still going to be an architect, Like, how often
Speaker 1: does anyone say, let me see your degree. It's true
Speaker 1: when you're just sing a house, I know. So, even
Speaker 1: though he didn't technically have the professional, you know, school
Speaker 1: credentials finished, he started practicing with a guy named Robert Walsh.
Speaker 1: He was very good at it early on, and everyone
Speaker 1: was like this guy, you know, did you see his degree?
Speaker 1: I didn't see his degree, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: ask because you should see the way he draws up
Speaker 1: a house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would hand off his drawings with this probably
Speaker 2: won't fall down.
Speaker 1: And I think that was Frank Loyd, right, Okay. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine he got married for the first time
Speaker 1: to a woman named Katherine Warman. They were college sweethearts,
Speaker 1: I guess, and had a daughter who had end up
Speaker 1: being the only sired child for Charles Eames. He never
Speaker 1: had a kid with Ray. Her name was Lucia, and
Speaker 1: he was doing such a good job that there was
Speaker 1: an architect. You mentioned his son, Arrow Saranon earlier, but
Speaker 1: the architect, the father, I guess, Eliel Saranon, said Hey,
Speaker 1: I like what you're throwing down there, Why don't you
Speaker 1: come on out to Michigan, to the Cranberry Academy of
Speaker 1: Art in Bloomfield Heels Hills, and why don't you become well,
Speaker 1: first of all, come out for a fellowship. But you know,
Speaker 1: as you'll see, Charles Eames was very ambitious guy, and
Speaker 1: before you know it, he was the director of the
Speaker 1: industrial design program there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was supposedly thinking he was just going to
Speaker 2: go there and take it easy and kind of regather, regroup,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, you're too talented. You need to
Speaker 2: head all this up at Cranbrook.
Speaker 1: I believe, right, which is very key because that is
Speaker 1: where Rey Ray ended up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm working together at Cranbrook. They got into one
Speaker 2: of their early materials, probably the material that made them
Speaker 2: famous at least initially but still is kind of associated
Speaker 2: with their design, plywood. Plywood. They were like, plywood, We're
Speaker 2: going to start making things out of plywood. Just watch.
Speaker 2: And I think at the time plywood doesn't have quite
Speaker 2: the connotation that does now, like the stuff you just
Speaker 2: kind of lay over your attic rafters and crawl on like.
Speaker 2: It was a little more high tech than that, but
Speaker 2: not that much more so. The idea of taking plywood
Speaker 2: and turning into a beautiful organic design that also was
Speaker 2: functional too, it was kind of groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Arrow and Charles and then Ray assisted
Speaker 1: on this project. Entered a chair into a Museum of
Speaker 1: Modern Arts nineteen forty one organic Design and Home Furnishings competition,
Speaker 1: and they won. Even though this chair was technically a failure,
Speaker 1: they were you know, they realized the reason they love
Speaker 1: plywood is that they could bend it in two different directions.
Speaker 2: They won because they found love.
Speaker 1: Probably so, but you could, you know, you could curve
Speaker 1: wood pieces that weren't plywood. But what you couldn't do
Speaker 1: is curve a wood piece and then curve it again
Speaker 1: in a different direction. Right, But they found that with
Speaker 1: plywood you basically could. But it was pretty early on
Speaker 1: in this process. So their chair where the back met
Speaker 1: the seat would splinter, which is no good. But they
Speaker 1: ended up covering it in fabric to hide that something
Speaker 1: that you'll see. They did not like fabric later in
Speaker 1: their designs. They thought it was sort of old fashioned.
Speaker 1: It was expensive, and they were trying to make stuff
Speaker 1: a little more affordable. But they covered this thing and
Speaker 1: fabric to hide that, and they won the competition. But
Speaker 1: the chair was even though it won the competition, it
Speaker 1: was a failure in that it was it could not
Speaker 1: be mass produced basically as is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw. Another stage of their plywood bending molding
Speaker 2: design was that they figured out that they could bend
Speaker 2: it even further if they cut like a slit in
Speaker 2: the middle of it.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, and they would make it.
Speaker 2: Almost like a keyhole slit, so it looked like a
Speaker 2: design element, but really it was allowing them to mold
Speaker 2: it a little further than than before. They were just
Speaker 2: what they were doing throughout like the late twenties and
Speaker 2: through the whole thirties and into the forties, they were
Speaker 2: experimenting with bending plywood to their will, essentially come here plywood. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that was I think. Did you say Ray helped
Speaker 2: on that particular one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she worked with them, and that's where they, you know,
Speaker 1: fell in love.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Charles and his first wife, Catherine, divorced I
Speaker 2: think after about eleven or twelve years of marriage, and
Speaker 2: he went after Ray pretty much immediately after, and they
Speaker 2: got married in nineteen forty one. And right after they
Speaker 2: got married in nineteen forty one, they did what any
Speaker 2: self respecting artist was doing at the time. They looked
Speaker 2: westward and got into some gelapi or other and drove
Speaker 2: out to California.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, forget it, New York, We're going.
Speaker 2: To La Also, I should say, I'm presuming they drove,
Speaker 2: but knowing me and the streak I'm on lately, they
Speaker 2: definitely flew. And everyone knows that they flew except me.
Speaker 1: Oh come on, So they went to La I'm with you, man.
Speaker 1: They drove their butts to California.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Chuck, You're so supportive of me.
Speaker 1: And I like to like the Beverly Hillbillies. Charles was
Speaker 1: on top of a rocking chair.
Speaker 2: Right, and Ray had the shotgun in her lap.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can you imagine? I mean that setup was very insane.
Speaker 1: There's a gun in a lap, There's an elderly woman
Speaker 1: in a rocking chair on top of a truck.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, but that's the hillbilly way. They don't care.
Speaker 2: They'll they'll they'll look danger in the face and laugh
Speaker 2: all the way to California.
Speaker 1: So they get to California, they started making connections, obviously
Speaker 1: pretty quickly out there to the southern California modernist scene,
Speaker 1: which was just getting going pretty hoppin'. A very key
Speaker 1: person they met and befriended was a guy named John Intenza,
Speaker 1: who published Arts and Architecture magazine, and they ended up
Speaker 1: designing twenty six different covers over like a five year period.
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: That's about half.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not a big math guy, but is it
Speaker 1: a monthly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it was monthly that's sixty issues over that
Speaker 2: five years, and if they did twenty six, it's almost
Speaker 2: half of them.
Speaker 1: As soon as I said was it monthly? I immediately
Speaker 1: panicked the name that I had just said was Arts
Speaker 1: and Architecture monthly.
Speaker 2: No, you did, and it's just Arts and Architecture quarterly.
Speaker 1: All right, oh quarterly. So they designed a bunch of
Speaker 1: those covers. Intenza became a big sort of supporter of theirs.
Speaker 1: And they also met a guy, an architect named Richard Neutra,
Speaker 1: who said, hey, I designed these killer apartments in Westwoode,
Speaker 1: the Strathmore apartments, and you should live in one of
Speaker 1: them because Orson Wells will live there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Strathmore makes me think of like some new skyscraper,
Speaker 2: but it was like a two story house ish structured,
Speaker 2: I think, divided into three apartments. And they're still on
Speaker 2: the market these days.
Speaker 1: So they're very nice looking.
Speaker 2: They are. They're very cool. So they just started making
Speaker 2: connections right off the bat, but they weren't really making
Speaker 2: any money, and Charles ended up well, they were doing
Speaker 2: two things. They were spending all of their free time
Speaker 2: working at home in their apartment, which they can burn
Speaker 2: it into like a working studio bending plywood. There's a
Speaker 2: legendary machine called the Kazam Machine that no one seems
Speaker 2: to know exactly how it worked, but they used it
Speaker 2: to mold plywood. To bend plywood. Part of it involved
Speaker 2: a heavy balloon and a bicycle pump that would provide
Speaker 2: the shape that it would be molded against. But somehow
Speaker 2: it also used electricity. So Charles climbed an electrical pole
Speaker 2: and tapped into the electricity. Very very unwise thing to do,
Speaker 2: and luckily he survived. But that's how that's how broke
Speaker 2: they were. They were stealing electricity to power their Kazam
Speaker 2: machine in their studio where they were still working on
Speaker 2: plywood designs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it used heating coils, so that had to have
Speaker 1: been what took all of the juice. Sure, and you know,
Speaker 1: applying heat to bin something is a pretty tried and
Speaker 1: true method. So I don't know about the air pump
Speaker 1: the balloon. I can picture, uh huh, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what that bike pump did it blew up the balloon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you look at the Kazam machine, it's it
Speaker 1: looks almost like a tique lounge chair that hasn't been
Speaker 1: finished yet.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. It's dancing right along the line of a
Speaker 2: wick a wheelchair. So I'm not a big fan of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I would have come in like a dummy
Speaker 1: and said, you're trying to design a chair with this thing,
Speaker 1: look at it. Just sit in it. That's right, You've
Speaker 1: got your chair.
Speaker 2: But they called that the Kazam machine as a reference
Speaker 2: to Alec Kazam, because you would put in like plywood
Speaker 2: and glue and something magically different would appear.
Speaker 1: Out Kazam with a exclamation plant. Yeah, sure after kazam,
Speaker 1: not after machine.
Speaker 2: That's right, although they should have used two and been
Speaker 2: like Kazam machine.
Speaker 1: Well, that would conjure something very deadly, so I guess.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Like I said, they were pretty broke, and Charles ended
Speaker 2: up taking a job at MGM designing sets. I believe
Speaker 2: could not for life of me find out what films
Speaker 2: he actually worked on. But while there he was not
Speaker 2: happy about that. He wrote to a friend that all
Speaker 2: hope for the future is lost, but I get a
Speaker 2: regular paycheck. So he was also taking materials that he
Speaker 2: found from his work back home too, to use in
Speaker 2: their home studio. But he also made I think a
Speaker 2: lifelong friend in director Billy Wilder.
Speaker 1: Yeah and great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Billy Wilder. Isn't he Chad our director from the
Speaker 2: Stuff You should Know TV Show's favorite director?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Is he?
Speaker 2: I think Chad said The Apartment is his favorite movie
Speaker 2: of all time.
Speaker 1: It's a great one. That's what our pal Scott Ackerman
Speaker 1: chose for a movie crush.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one of the great movies. And Billy Wilder
Speaker 1: did all kinds of great movies.
Speaker 2: You had me at Sunset Boulevard, Yeah, exactly. So the
Speaker 2: em Shase the reason Billy Wilder figures into it, aside
Speaker 2: from like, wow, there's the name drop right there. The
Speaker 2: em shase, which is a very famous well shave lounge
Speaker 2: decked out in leather with like a pillow to go
Speaker 2: under your caves and everything. It's to me, it looks
Speaker 2: like what your psychologists would use while they gave you
Speaker 2: a guy innecological exam. It's like a cross between a
Speaker 2: couch and your shrink's office and an exam table in
Speaker 2: your doctor's office.
Speaker 1: Oh well, just a word of advice if your psychologists
Speaker 1: trying to give you a gynological kind of logical exam.
Speaker 2: That's exit stage left. Quickly. Yeah, so, yes, thank you
Speaker 2: for taking my joke and turning it really dark.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I just want to make sure everyone
Speaker 1: understood clearly.
Speaker 2: But the reason Billy Wilder inspired the Eames Shays is
Speaker 2: that he would take naps on sets, and apparently there
Speaker 2: was one that bless him that Charles Eames witness where
Speaker 2: Billy Wilder was taking a nap on a six by
Speaker 2: twelve inch plank that was stood up on two saw horses.
Speaker 2: That's where he was napping. That's no good, no, So
Speaker 2: Charles was like, I need to help my friend here.
Speaker 1: All right. I think that's a good time for a break.
Speaker 1: You get Billy Wilder asleep in the corner one of
Speaker 1: those psychologists chases.
Speaker 2: No, this one's straight. It's not the other one. The
Speaker 2: curvy one's the lush chaise.
Speaker 1: Oh really, because I saw the chase was the curvy one.
Speaker 2: Now there's two. One of the curvy one is called
Speaker 2: lush chaise. The emshaise, the original em shase is like
Speaker 2: it looks like one of their like aluminum group leather
Speaker 2: upholstered chairs, but laid out essentially flat.
Speaker 1: Oh Billy Wilder should stuck around.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you my my description of it was like
Speaker 2: spot on.
Speaker 1: In my head, though it made more sense for the
Speaker 1: Curby one. Your description.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so if you wanted to be really comfortable.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take a break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: And stub with Joshua John. All right.
Speaker 1: So World War two rolls around, and this was a
Speaker 1: bit of a shift for everybody in the world, probably
Speaker 1: but certainly for the Eames family. Southern California is very
Speaker 1: was and still is very big in defense manufacturing, and
Speaker 1: the military said, hey, this plywood stuff is really something.
Speaker 2: Have you seen this plywood?
Speaker 1: We like to you know, it's lightweight, it's you know,
Speaker 1: can be bent in two different directions out here if
Speaker 1: you have a kazam machine and we're into it. And
Speaker 1: they knew a guy named Wendell Scott, an old friend
Speaker 1: of Charles's, who was a Navy doctor. They got together
Speaker 1: for a visit. He saw this kazam machine and he said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. We've been using these metal leg splints
Speaker 1: for war and these things are no good that they're
Speaker 1: not good for protection in the field. We need metal
Speaker 1: for other things. And we think that you might be
Speaker 1: able to or I think you might be able to
Speaker 1: build some better wooden splints out of bending plywood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's exactly what they did. They recruited a
Speaker 2: friend that Charles had made an MGM, a theater designer
Speaker 2: named Margaret Harris, and together with them and Intenza, they're
Speaker 2: pretty much their benefactor by this point. In Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: they created a wooden splint for the US Navy that
Speaker 2: was lightweight. It had strategic holes in it that made
Speaker 2: it extra light weight, but also you could run straps
Speaker 2: through to strap the leg to the splint. They were stackable,
Speaker 2: very very important. So it was mass producible, it was
Speaker 2: extremely mobile, it was lightweight, but it also looked kind
Speaker 2: of nice. I mean, as far as leg splints go,
Speaker 2: it's an attractive legs point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was called the Transportation egg splint. Egg splint, Oh, my.
Speaker 2: Lord, Transportation Egg's Benedict leg splint.
Speaker 1: And they made five thousand. The Navy ordered five thousand
Speaker 1: of these things, so all of a sudden they had
Speaker 1: a little money coming in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because at ten dollars per that's what they charged. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they could have that'd be a million dollars a million
Speaker 2: dollar order.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of dough.
Speaker 2: And that's not my math. I just went ahead and
Speaker 2: converted it to today's dollars. That's what I.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, I was about to say, here we go.
Speaker 2: Five thousand times ten is a million.
Speaker 1: So such money that they were able to form a
Speaker 1: company called the Plywood I'm sorry, deply formed wood Company.
Speaker 1: They had a little office in Venice Beach at the time,
Speaker 1: and they sold that thing. They didn't want to be
Speaker 1: in that business, really, so they built it and they
Speaker 1: sold it to a company based out a mission called
Speaker 1: Evans Products. Charles worked there for a little while, headed
Speaker 1: up the molded plywood division. And then the big, big
Speaker 1: change in their life came in nineteen forty three when
Speaker 1: they opened up what they called nine oh one, which
Speaker 1: was their office. It's still there today at nine oh
Speaker 1: one now it's Abbot Kenney Boulevard. Back then it was
Speaker 1: West Washington Boulevard in Venice.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. So, yeah, the leg splint thing was not just
Speaker 2: a little boondoggle we went on. The reason it was
Speaker 2: important was they made a bunch of contexts. They got
Speaker 2: a lot of business experience, they got a little money,
Speaker 2: and they essentially that's what gave them the foundation to
Speaker 2: move up from being broke theater designers who were just
Speaker 2: kind of working in their apartment to legitimate furniture designers
Speaker 2: who now had their own business in office.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they got equipment too, and materials they had.
Speaker 1: They were pretty set up there at nine oh one,
Speaker 1: for sure, And if you watch the documentary or just
Speaker 1: know about nine oh one, it was a it was
Speaker 1: a bit of a kind of a crazy wonderland to
Speaker 1: work at. Some of the designers there said it was
Speaker 1: like working at Disneyland. It was fun. There weren't sort
Speaker 1: of regular routines. There weren't stuffy staff meetings. It was
Speaker 1: just one of those places where, you know, long before
Speaker 1: you know, every tech office in the world was like,
Speaker 1: let's have a ping pong table and you know, skittles
Speaker 1: all over the place. They had a sort of a
Speaker 1: classy version of that in nineteen forty three, which was
Speaker 1: not how offices worked back then, even creative offices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we'll see. One of the things they're also
Speaker 2: known for is they made a line of toys. And
Speaker 2: the reason they also kind of forade into toys is
Speaker 2: because at least two Charles, but I think also to
Speaker 2: Ray as well. Charles often like gets the quotes, but
Speaker 2: they were in such sink that I assume in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases, Ray probably felt at least similar, if
Speaker 2: not the same. But in this instance, Charles had some
Speaker 2: quote about how play is actually serious business, that that's
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that unlocks curiosity. Just doing an
Speaker 2: activity simply for the activity's sake just kind of resets
Speaker 2: the brain and the mind. So I'm not at all
Speaker 2: surprised to hear that their office was was like that,
Speaker 2: because that's just what they seemed to do. They would
Speaker 2: just do stuff learn by doing all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another reason they went into things like toys and
Speaker 1: then later filmmaking, as we'll see, is he didn't as
Speaker 1: great as his reputation was. He didn't want to be
Speaker 1: chair guy.
Speaker 2: Sure, plus he really liked toys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's so good at chairs.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, that's the thing, like when you hear the
Speaker 2: word emes like almost probably eighty percent of the time,
Speaker 2: if not more, the next word is chair. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: the chairs that they designed are so iconic and the
Speaker 2: first one that they hit the market with. So they
Speaker 2: opened the office in nineteen forty three. By nineteen forty six,
Speaker 2: they had a chair in mass production. At first with
Speaker 2: that Evans products. But eventually Evans is like, we don't
Speaker 2: really know what we're doing. We're more of the leg
Speaker 2: splint producers. Maybe you guy should talk to Herman Miller.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what they did.
Speaker 2: They came up with the Eames Chair would, the ECW.
Speaker 2: Nowadays it's called the LCW the lounge chair would and
Speaker 2: it's molded bent plywood on a plywood base and it
Speaker 2: is gorgeous and it's actually super comfortable without a lick
Speaker 2: of padding on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, they figured out if you mold
Speaker 1: something just right to where the human body can function
Speaker 1: well in it. And they were into form, but they
Speaker 1: were very much into function. They did not want some weird,
Speaker 1: fancy looking thing that's not fun or comfortable to sit on. Ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ray had a quote and I assumed Charles probably
Speaker 2: felt the same way, is that what works is better
Speaker 2: than what looks good. The looks can change, but what
Speaker 2: works works, and there's a ton of wisdom in there.
Speaker 1: That was actually Ray, That's what I said. Oh, oh oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't get the joke.
Speaker 2: I've made a reference to the joke where I went
Speaker 2: on some horrible tangent earlier about Yeah, I was about
Speaker 2: to do it again. So thank you for saving everyone.
Speaker 1: So Herman Miller you mentioned, this is a big deal
Speaker 1: because the Herman Miller company out of Michigan was great
Speaker 1: at making furniture. They were producing modernist furniture. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: did we already have a big mistake with Charles Nelson?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess maybe maybe I said Charles.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, George Nelson is who we're talking about,
Speaker 1: very iconic designer. In fact, in my little studio here,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a George Nelson clock.
Speaker 2: Which one.
Speaker 1: The one that is rounded wood?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the balls on the end, the ball clock.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like someone took a round ball made
Speaker 1: of wood and then sliced the first third of it
Speaker 1: off and that's a clock face.
Speaker 2: I got you, Okay, Yeah, we have the eye clock.
Speaker 1: The eye clock. I think I know which one you're
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 2: It it looks like an eye and the like the numbers.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have numbers, but you know, like the little
Speaker 2: lines that go to the numbers. It has those, but
Speaker 2: they're in some crazy, weird spread out positions, but they
Speaker 2: still keep time. It's really amazing. But yeah, George Nelson's
Speaker 2: very well known for creating a lot of super fifties clocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think any of his clocks had numbers,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, because he was kind of like,
Speaker 1: you don't need a number if you know what o'clock
Speaker 1: looks like and how to read it. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: know that's another reason this one's fun for us, because
Speaker 1: both of us love this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So for George Nelson, go look up Nelson clocks,
Speaker 2: look up Nelson bubble lamps. Probably seen those before. The
Speaker 2: Nelson platform bench and then the swag leg desk. Those
Speaker 2: are some of his best designs. But in addition to
Speaker 2: being a designer himself, he also he was one of
Speaker 2: those A plus people who recruited other A plus people
Speaker 2: to work with him. Yeah, and one of the groups
Speaker 2: of A plus people he recruited were the emes, and
Speaker 2: they started working with George Nelson at Herman Miller essentially
Speaker 2: as like independent contractors, just probably exclusively sending their designs
Speaker 2: to Herman Miller to be produced.
Speaker 1: That's right, And could you imagine if we didn't have
Speaker 1: little slip ups, we've never gotten to Charles Nilson, Riley sidebar.
Speaker 2: Man you just found the silver lining to that thousand emails.
Speaker 1: So and that's a good lesson to people to never
Speaker 1: stop the podcast right in the middle to email us
Speaker 1: a correction. Sometimes we catch things. So they're working together
Speaker 1: now they're working for Herman Miller. This is a sort
Speaker 1: of a match made in heaven because they had the
Speaker 1: smarts and the experience to like mass produce and pump
Speaker 1: out these great designs. On Herman Miller side, they had
Speaker 1: these amazing designers now working for them, and they, like
Speaker 1: you said, you know, from the beginning they were trying
Speaker 1: to create these sort of simple, stylish but you know,
Speaker 1: practical pieces and as we'll see, you know, things that
Speaker 1: would end up going in schools and bus stations and
Speaker 1: stuff like.
Speaker 2: That and airports. So if you go to an airport
Speaker 2: today and you see like that long row of chairs
Speaker 2: that you just sit in while you're waiting at the gate,
Speaker 2: and they're all connected by metal. They have a leather back,
Speaker 2: a leather seat in two you know arms. That's that's
Speaker 2: an EMES design there the air I can't remember the
Speaker 2: sling Group chair is what they're called. And they're still
Speaker 2: in production. So if it's not an actual legitimate emes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: set of chairs, it's a knockoff of it. That's how
Speaker 2: ubiquitous there stuff is. It was like everywhere, like most
Speaker 2: of the stuff we're talking about. If you can't bring
Speaker 2: it to mine, I will bet that if you go
Speaker 2: look it up, yeah, probably seen it before.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean their stuff is either literally all over
Speaker 1: the place or just in spirit in a lot of places.
Speaker 1: Just ubiquitous in America, yeah for sure. Maybe elsewhere, but
Speaker 1: I don't I don't get to travel much.
Speaker 2: I know, I haven't traveled that much either. It's always
Speaker 2: for tour.
Speaker 1: For Ray's side, she was an amazing artist, a great painter.
Speaker 1: She ended up working, you know, in adding a lot
Speaker 1: of fun and design elements to the things that were happening.
Speaker 1: If you watch a documentary, you definitely get the sense
Speaker 1: that she she's the one that kind of held it
Speaker 1: all together. She had a great attention to detail. So
Speaker 1: like as far as the company, you know, functioning as
Speaker 1: a as a company and not just a funhouse of
Speaker 1: like kids designing things. You know, as far as the
Speaker 1: staff goes, she kind of kept things on the rails
Speaker 1: and also provided a lot of fun and color and
Speaker 1: textural detail and you know, if you watch interviews you
Speaker 1: know with them over the years on YouTube, she's always
Speaker 1: standing behind Charles, of course, and she doesn't say much
Speaker 1: on camera. It's always him and his name is the
Speaker 1: one that's up there, and it gets a little frustrating,
Speaker 1: but it was the fact of the matter is it
Speaker 1: was just a time in the nineteen fifties where even
Speaker 1: though Charles would say things like anything I can do,
Speaker 1: Ray can do better than me. It's just how it was.
Speaker 1: Then she took a bit of a back seat unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, there's no other way to put it.
Speaker 2: It's just how it was. There's a very famous clip
Speaker 2: of them on an NBC show called Home that was
Speaker 2: hosted by the actress Arlene Francis, And in this clip,
Speaker 2: it's like I think nine or eleven minute like segment
Speaker 2: on the show. Yeah, they actually debuted, Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: They debuted one of their famous chairs, which we'll talk
Speaker 2: about in the second, the Eames lounge chair. But Arlene
Speaker 2: Francis is even like almost cattily dismissive of Ray, and
Speaker 2: Ray is just sitting there likes has to have a
Speaker 2: big smile on her face, because that's what you're expected
Speaker 2: to do. But she was just sidelined, just pushed to
Speaker 2: the side in this interview. Despite yeah, over the years,
Speaker 2: like Charles just being like, no, this this, this one's
Speaker 2: not behind me, she's right next to me, Like we're equals,
Speaker 2: we're partners where you do this together. The society was
Speaker 2: just like, that's that's not true stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's kind of like I'm paraphrasing, but the overall
Speaker 1: vibe was in the brief time she was allowed to speak,
Speaker 1: was tell me how you support your husband that kind
Speaker 1: of thing exactly. Yeah. So they're making all kinds of
Speaker 1: things collapsible sofas, fiberglass shell chairs, those were very, very famous.
Speaker 1: If you look up there and I think this one
Speaker 1: wont to Design Award for moment as well. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty there molded fiberglass armchair. Look that thing up and
Speaker 1: you'll say, oh that chair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the one that I've sat in in every school
Speaker 2: cafeteria ever at the bus station. Like if you see
Speaker 2: like a seat that's plastic and kind of molded to
Speaker 2: fit your form, that was the Eames fiberglass armchair.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And again songs upholstery, they would end up
Speaker 1: using leather, as we'll see here in a second. But
Speaker 1: most of this early stuff was like aluminum molded fiberglass
Speaker 1: and don't forget plywood, plastic, plywood, wire mesh stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, to me, that's what I don't like about
Speaker 2: their design. It has too much of an industrial flavor,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what they're going for. They were trying
Speaker 2: to show like, you can you can come up with
Speaker 2: beautiful design that's affordable using mass produced, you know, materials,
Speaker 2: and so that's what they were doing. But it just
Speaker 2: looks a little industrial to me. And then it has
Speaker 2: that veneer of like fifty years, which makes industrial products
Speaker 2: like somehow creepy. So some of their actual vintage stuff
Speaker 2: I'm not crazy about. But there's a really cute segment
Speaker 2: on Antique's road Show if you want to see one
Speaker 2: of the EMES storage units, one of their earliest ones,
Speaker 2: if you look up Herman Miller storage unit Fort Worth,
Speaker 2: there's like a five or six minute segment where this
Speaker 2: woman is told that something she paid fifteen dollars for
Speaker 2: is worth like twenty thousand dollars. Oh wow, I love
Speaker 2: Antiques Roadshow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great show. And another thing that was
Speaker 1: great about their designs with these chairs in particulars that
Speaker 1: they were stackable. I think they may have learned from
Speaker 1: that egg splint that if you make something stackable, that
Speaker 1: that's very handy if you have to clear a cafeteria
Speaker 1: for a school play or dodgeball.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. So that was their their genuinely affordable breakthrough,
Speaker 2: and they actually kind of, from what I can tell,
Speaker 2: left molded plywood largely behind. That's not entirely true, but
Speaker 2: they really went, you know, full bore on molded fiberglass
Speaker 2: and then plastic because it really did fulfill a lot
Speaker 2: of the service their purposes they wanted, including affordability. Like
Speaker 2: that first chair of theirs, Time magazine named it the
Speaker 2: chair of the century. Before the century, it was even
Speaker 2: halfway through, Like that's how much of a splash it made.
Speaker 2: And they were making it for like the average person
Speaker 2: to be able to buy. But it was still in
Speaker 2: today's dollars, like a five hundred and twenty five dollars
Speaker 2: like single chair, you know what I mean, So it
Speaker 2: wasn't exactly affordable. When they started to get into fiberglass
Speaker 2: and plastic, then they were making chairs that the average
Speaker 2: person could afford.
Speaker 1: I wonder if like when they made that announcement. How
Speaker 1: many chair designers and builders were just like, well, what's
Speaker 1: the point and just threw their chair into the fireplace.
Speaker 2: Like I guess I'll go into toys. Damn it. They're
Speaker 2: into toys too.
Speaker 1: So you said they moved away from plywood, but not
Speaker 1: before this iconic chair that you mentioned briefly earlier.
Speaker 2: That's why I corrected myself.
Speaker 1: The Eames lounge, which was molded plywood. It was fabric.
Speaker 1: The very first one that was introduced on that show
Speaker 1: was rosewood, plywood and black leather. And this is the
Speaker 1: one that made them famous. It came with an ottoman
Speaker 1: or I guess. I don't even know if you had
Speaker 1: to buy it separately back then, but it was. It's
Speaker 1: a gorgeous chair. I mean, they're the ones they sit
Speaker 1: on on Shark Tank. They are copied heavily. I imagine the
Speaker 1: knockoffs are not nearly as good. But I don't own one,
Speaker 1: but I've always wonted one, and I think one day
Speaker 1: I might have to splash down for one.
Speaker 2: There's this one that I covet that was owned by
Speaker 2: orvile Reddenbacher, which just somehow makes it even more like
Speaker 2: mid century. Amazing.
Speaker 1: Do you imagine eating popcorn in that thing? Watching a movie?
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's this guy who is, like, you know,
Speaker 2: he refurbished an Atomic Ranch, or it's on the magazine,
Speaker 2: the internet magazine Atomic Ranch. But that kind of like
Speaker 2: mid century space age house he refurbished, and he has
Speaker 2: that orval Reddenbocker knockoff. It's actually a knockoff of the
Speaker 2: Eames lounge. He has it, and he said they eat
Speaker 2: popcorn in it.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: I think so too, And I don't know why. I
Speaker 2: don't even know how I first heard about it, but
Speaker 2: I covet that particular chair. It's great.
Speaker 1: You know, one day, Josh, I'm gonna really roode for
Speaker 1: you to get that chair.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I can't wait till that day starts. Let's
Speaker 2: talk about that chair a little bit. Oh sure, okay,
Speaker 2: well here I go. So the chair itself was different.
Speaker 2: It was multiplied with like you said, but it was
Speaker 2: upholstered in leather like I think also you said. But
Speaker 2: it was meant to be exceedingly comfortable. And the way
Speaker 2: that Charles Putt is supposed to have the warm, receptive
Speaker 2: look of a well used first Baseman's Myt, which definitely
Speaker 2: gets that across. No, they're super duper comfortable, especially if
Speaker 2: you remind yourself like I'm actually sitting on polster plywood here, right.
Speaker 2: They have become so iconic and so associated with the
Speaker 2: mid century modern aesthetic, and in particular it's almost like
Speaker 2: a signal or a code for someone who is powerful
Speaker 2: captain of industry. Like it's like a mover and a
Speaker 2: shaker of that era if you're doing like a period piece,
Speaker 2: so much so that when is it. Matthew Wiener, who
Speaker 2: is the showrunner for mad Men Winer weinerslov He said,
Speaker 2: We're not using the Eames lounge in our show. It's
Speaker 2: just such a cliche. It shows up everywhere, and mad
Speaker 2: Men is like, of course it's going to show up
Speaker 2: in mad Men. So was he very wisely was like, Nope,
Speaker 2: we're not doing that. But he went with a different
Speaker 2: Eam set, the Emes Aluminum group, which is equally cool.
Speaker 1: But in a different way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely like the other one better. But this
Speaker 1: was more of an office chair. You've seen it before
Speaker 1: as well, no padding on the arms, but it was
Speaker 1: it's like a ribbed, ribbed leather. I promise you look
Speaker 1: this thing up and you'll go, oh, that thing exactly
Speaker 1: that held Don Draper's butt for however many years.
Speaker 2: And also, I mean, depending on how hip your workplaces,
Speaker 2: you might have a knockoff of this in your office.
Speaker 2: Like it's really that's something that happens in design a lot.
Speaker 2: Somebody comes up with an iconic design and then everybody
Speaker 2: rips it off. That's just the part of the industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I feel like that's another breakpoint. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, hepcat. We're going to be right back at
Speaker 1: this and josh will pick up after the break with toys,
Speaker 1: learn and stuff with Joshua John stuff.
Speaker 3: You shine up, all right, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Let's talk toys, because, like I said, they considered play
Speaker 2: serious business because of what it could do to unlock you.
Speaker 2: And they were playful people for sure. Yeah, before we
Speaker 2: talk about toys, let's put that on the back burner
Speaker 2: for a second and talk about their architecture work, because
Speaker 2: remember Charles was a crypto pseudo architect for a while,
Speaker 2: an outlaw architect, I guess, yeah, And this was an
Speaker 2: age where you could work with other amazing designers in architects.
Speaker 2: And remember they were friends already with aerosaranin So they
Speaker 2: worked with him on at least one house called case
Speaker 2: Study House number nine, and that's a pretty famous house,
Speaker 2: but it is nothing compared to Case Study House number eight,
Speaker 2: which is in fact the house that Ray and Charles
Speaker 2: Eames designed and ended up living in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the case Study Houses. We'll say what it is.
Speaker 1: But I've had this on my list for like ten
Speaker 1: years to do.
Speaker 2: Oh it's so neat.
Speaker 3: Took it in.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, But what to that house?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really neat.
Speaker 1: But the Case Study program was a program sponsored by
Speaker 1: Art and Architecture magazine where they built these houses. I
Speaker 1: think there were thirty six designs, not just the Eames,
Speaker 1: all sorts of architects. Right over the course of like
Speaker 1: twenty one years, they built twenty six of these houses,
Speaker 1: and eighteen of them are still as is a handful
Speaker 1: of being destroyed, which is awful. Yea, and maybe more
Speaker 1: awful a handful of them when you look up, like
Speaker 1: the list says something like, you know, renovated. I'm paraphrasing
Speaker 1: to a country renovated so much that you can't even
Speaker 1: tell it's what it was.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, Yeah, for sure, But we're going.
Speaker 1: To do one on the case study houses in that program.
Speaker 1: It was pretty amazing. But out of this came case
Speaker 1: Study eight, where like you said, the Ames lived in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Palisades. It was initially called the Bridge House
Speaker 1: because it was going to be cantilevered out over this
Speaker 1: big grassy meadow toward the sea because you could see
Speaker 1: the ocean there. And Charles at one point reconsidered along
Speaker 1: with Ray, and they said, hey, we're doing that thing
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to do an architecture, which is
Speaker 1: take this beautiful area and just like plunk a house
Speaker 1: down in the middle of it. And he fell in
Speaker 1: love with that meadow and he decided to change the
Speaker 1: complete design of it instead of cantilevering it out over
Speaker 1: this meadow, make the meadow this big beautiful front yard basically,
Speaker 1: and they came up with they scrapped the Ridge House
Speaker 1: and came up with the design for number eight, which
Speaker 1: was this very beautiful, square, flat roofed, colorful, amazing house.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So apparently Ray was a fan of Mandria. And
Speaker 2: you can tell because these are two giant squares made
Speaker 2: of glass and steel, and then they have panels in
Speaker 2: some places where you might have a window, and those
Speaker 2: panels would be colored like yellow or blue or red
Speaker 2: or white like a Mandria painting. But they were the ones.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this house is the one that
Speaker 2: introduced it. It's possible. The idea of like soaring ceilings,
Speaker 2: of huge open space floor plans, it was like a
Speaker 2: it's a modernist masterpiece. But one of the things that's
Speaker 2: so great about it is that Ray decorated it to
Speaker 2: the hilt with art objects, gifts from friends, paintings, sculptures,
Speaker 2: folk art, weavings, everything you can think of. It was
Speaker 2: just such a busy room. There's like leopard skin rugs
Speaker 2: and just weird stuff everywhere. And this was entirely counter
Speaker 2: to the trend at the time, which was if you
Speaker 2: were modernist, you're also minimalist. There in yeah, you can't
Speaker 2: extract one from the other, and she did, and that
Speaker 2: was a huge contribution to modernism because a lot of
Speaker 2: people are turned off, including me, are turned off by minimalism, like,
Speaker 2: can't stand it. It's an awful, awful way to live,
Speaker 2: I think, And she was like, hey, you can be
Speaker 2: modernists and not be minimalist, you know. So she's credited
Speaker 2: with that as being probably her greatest contribution, solo contribution
Speaker 2: to modernism is the design choices she made in that house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whimsical and warm. I love it. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Like you said, they all did case study house number
Speaker 1: nine on the same lot as number eight. Intinda himself
Speaker 1: would live in number nine, and he also designed his
Speaker 1: old buddy Billy Wilder's house. He said, Hey, I love
Speaker 1: that that flat board that you gussied up for me.
Speaker 1: Can you make me a flat house? And he said sure.
Speaker 1: And so this house in Beverly Hills, where Billy Wilder
Speaker 1: and his wife Audrey Young lived, is another gorgeous, you know,
Speaker 1: flat roofed, sort of square, boxy, brilliant design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very cool. And they also planned eucalyptus trees
Speaker 2: all around it, and I think at least on one
Speaker 2: of them, there's swings that you can swing on when
Speaker 2: you're there. When we went, we didn't we just showed up.
Speaker 2: We didn't make reservations and there was no one there,
Speaker 2: so we had the place to ourselves. We weren't able
Speaker 2: to go inside, but you know, we peeked in the
Speaker 2: windows and all that.
Speaker 1: It's all windows, pretty the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I know, you really could, he think though, it's definitely
Speaker 2: worth visiting, Chuck, I think you'd love it.
Speaker 1: Oh totally. Is there so many things in LA that
Speaker 1: I was either unaware of or too broke to do that.
Speaker 1: I try to do those things when I go back now.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: So Ray is busy also working on side gigs, designing
Speaker 1: textiles and fabrics and patterns. A couple of her most
Speaker 1: famous ones that Waverley Products picked up is called c
Speaker 1: Things Sea Things, which is whimsical and fun, just like
Speaker 1: she was a little starfish and sort of amba like things.
Speaker 1: And then she was very famous for something you still
Speaker 1: see a lot today called the Emes Dots, which is
Speaker 1: this design that are dots with interconnected lines. It's simple stuff,
Speaker 1: but iconic.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you're into west Elm stuff, you have seen
Speaker 2: this design before or some version of it for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So toys, toys, I think it's time to talk about
Speaker 2: toys in particular. They had one called the Toy Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it was a set of like these vinyl panels
Speaker 2: that you would frame with dowels and then connect to
Speaker 2: other panels with other dowels, and they were either square
Speaker 2: or triangle. I think they're about three feet across, and
Speaker 2: the whole point of it was you can build all
Speaker 2: sorts of structures out of it. You can use it
Speaker 2: to build the wings of a theater and pretend you're
Speaker 2: on a stage like it was. You were intended to
Speaker 2: use your imagination, even though in the instructions it shows
Speaker 2: you some ideas and how to build some stuff. But
Speaker 2: it was a toy for everybody, like for all ages.
Speaker 2: And that was I think the first one they came
Speaker 2: up with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was in fifty one. They had the House
Speaker 1: of Cards as well, which is produced in fifty two.
Speaker 1: It's a deck of cards. The patterns on them are beautiful.
Speaker 1: All the cards are different things. It's not like just
Speaker 1: a single pattern deck. But they had notches. It's a house,
Speaker 1: you build it, so they had notcha so you could
Speaker 1: build it into these very emsy looking square structures the
Speaker 1: way the nachas are built. And I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna buy one of those from myle pal Josh, oh thanks.
Speaker 1: I went to It's not coming Dowork. Okay, I went
Speaker 1: to Etsy. That original back is thirty two hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: So amen, that's a lot of money for a deck
Speaker 1: of cards.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it so okay, well, then you can get
Speaker 2: me one of their musical towers instead.
Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, they were very well known for this being
Speaker 1: in their office. Is still there today. It is a
Speaker 1: vertical xylophone. Yeah, and you drop a ball down it, yeah,
Speaker 1: like plink and yeah, and it just sort of bounces
Speaker 1: its way down, hitting different notes on the way down,
Speaker 1: which is just super fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And all the notes are rearrangeable too, which is
Speaker 2: just sweet. There's only three of them in existence, so
Speaker 2: I presume it might even be more than a House
Speaker 2: of cards toy.
Speaker 1: You can buy me that.
Speaker 2: So in addition to toys to furniture, the Emes were
Speaker 2: they were just creative, creative people through and through, and
Speaker 2: they saw design everywhere. They had a collection of almost
Speaker 2: a quarter of a million slides, and they would create
Speaker 2: these slide show or multimedia presentations juxtaposing like a shell
Speaker 2: with like a an interstate overpass and be like, look
Speaker 2: at how similar this is. They were just into all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. And so they've found a lot
Speaker 2: of full film in like another phase, kind of like
Speaker 2: the end phase of their career together, which was coming
Speaker 2: up with movies, exhibits and presentations essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they found work in a few different ways.
Speaker 1: They ended up being sponsored or I guess hired by corporations.
Speaker 1: Notably IBM was one of them to create you know,
Speaker 1: kind of industrial films here and there, multi media projects.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, you know, how you can get your
Speaker 1: hand caught in a printer or anything like that. All
Speaker 1: kinds of different stuff, very creative things. One of the
Speaker 1: most famous films they made, probably the most famous, it's
Speaker 1: called Powers of Ten. I did a prototype film in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight called a rough sketch for a proposed
Speaker 1: film dealing with the powers of ten and the relative
Speaker 1: size of things in the universe, shot at Miami in
Speaker 1: black and white, and then made a final version. They
Speaker 1: worked on this thing for a long time. It's based
Speaker 1: on a book by a Dutch Dutch teacher named Keys
Speaker 1: Boca called Cosmic View, Colan the Universe and forty Jumps.
Speaker 1: But the final version they shot on the shores of
Speaker 1: Lake Erie. I'm sorry, boy, I almost screwed that one
Speaker 1: up Lake Michigan in Chicago. The final version was in
Speaker 1: seventy seven. It was in color. It was called Powers
Speaker 1: of Ten colon a film dealing with the relative size
Speaker 1: of things in the universe. And what that all means
Speaker 1: is they start with a simple overhead shot of this
Speaker 1: couple next to Lake Michigan having a picnic, and then
Speaker 1: it just keeps zooming back by Powers of ten, narrated
Speaker 1: the whole time by a gentleman MIT physics professor named
Speaker 1: Philip Morrison and Cameron Crow, the director very much inspired
Speaker 1: by Billy Wilder. He opens Jerry Maguire with a very
Speaker 1: similar thing. And I guarantee you he took this from
Speaker 1: the EMES project.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm sure like it was. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: neat and if you think of it, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, it's like somebody was going to stumble on
Speaker 2: this sooner or later. But I don't know how much
Speaker 2: that is just because they put it out there initially.
Speaker 2: But they would zoom out, I think, all the way
Speaker 2: until it was like ten to the tenth power, fifteenth
Speaker 2: power something like that. That is, so the entire known
Speaker 2: universe was encompassed and then zoomed all the way in
Speaker 2: back to that guy laying on a picnic blanket in
Speaker 2: Chicago and then threw his skin into like a proton
Speaker 2: and a carbon atom.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, super cool. It's nine minutes on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It's very very much worth watching it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could watch it ten times in an hour
Speaker 2: and a half if you wanted to. Yeah, but it
Speaker 2: is very cool and it is YouTube, and it is
Speaker 2: definitely worth watching. And that's definitely what they were known for.
Speaker 2: But they made I think one hundred and twenty five films,
Speaker 2: and like I said, they made exhibits for museums, some
Speaker 2: of which are still around right now. They just did
Speaker 2: all sorts of really cool things, like if they had
Speaker 2: an idea, they would explore any medium that they thought
Speaker 2: best got it across. They were just not afraid of
Speaker 2: taking risks. And I didn't realize that about them. I
Speaker 2: didn't know anything about until I met you mean, then
Speaker 2: I started to learn about, you know, furniture design and
Speaker 2: all that, and then from researching this, I got to
Speaker 2: know them better. And I just I just think there
Speaker 2: I admire them a lot more than I did before
Speaker 2: I started researching this, just because they were so varied
Speaker 2: in their pursuits. I just think they're neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And you know, it was a great love
Speaker 1: story on one hand, but we do need to just
Speaker 1: sort of mention kind of the darker side, which is
Speaker 1: when I was talking to you about this, you made
Speaker 1: a joke about like people buried in their basement or
Speaker 1: something not that dark. Okay, but you know, when you
Speaker 1: run a design concern, your name is the one that's
Speaker 1: on it. Sometimes it was Charles and Ray, usually just Charles,
Speaker 1: but there they had a whole team of people that
Speaker 1: worked on this stuff, these young designers that work for
Speaker 1: them that you know, they never got any credit, and
Speaker 1: they kind of talked about that. Some people felt exploited.
Speaker 1: Some were like, yeah, we were exploited, but we also
Speaker 1: exploited their name because we worked for the hottest design firm.
Speaker 1: And it was sort of a give and take. And
Speaker 1: that's just sort of the deal. Your name doesn't go
Speaker 1: up there if you're on the team that creates the
Speaker 1: thing that the person whose name is on the you know,
Speaker 1: the placard on the office door, they're they're going to
Speaker 1: get the credit still happens a lot. People are better
Speaker 1: these days about giving credit down to staff. Back then,
Speaker 1: not so much. And then the other thing is Charles
Speaker 1: very very sadly had some affairs. Notably had a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty heavy love affair with a woman named Judith Wexler,
Speaker 1: who he you know, he was so far into it
Speaker 1: that he was like, I want to sell nine oh one,
Speaker 1: I want to get divorced, I want to move to
Speaker 1: New York, I want to marry you. I want to
Speaker 1: have a baby. And she broke it off because she said,
Speaker 1: you couldn't do that to Ray, because they were friends
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Man the Middle century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Ray knew about the stuff. It was
Speaker 1: a time where divorce wasn't as popular and it was
Speaker 1: tough for her. She apparently dealt with it very privately.
Speaker 1: But you know they stuck together until the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, Yeah, wow, I didn't know about that either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but worth mentioning until you know. Charles died in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Something sweet about that is Ray died exactly a
Speaker 2: decade later, on August twenty first, nineteen eighty eight. And
Speaker 2: she spent that decade basically archiving in or organizing and
Speaker 2: documenting all the work they did together. And then I
Speaker 2: guess she realized or felt like her work was done
Speaker 2: and said, Ray out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She passed from cancer. He died of a heart
Speaker 1: attack on a consulting trip in Saint Louis. And you know,
Speaker 1: they were very beloved. The people. He didn't have any employees.
Speaker 1: It sounded like they didn't absolutely love them. I think
Speaker 1: some of them were a little salty about credit here
Speaker 1: and there, But to a person, they were all like
Speaker 1: it was a magical time. They were magical people, and
Speaker 1: it was just a great thing all the way around.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm definitely I'm glad we included the dark side.
Speaker 1: Then you can't white watch that stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, it's true. You got anything else, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Look forward to case study House podcasts.
Speaker 2: Okay, podcasts are short stuff.
Speaker 1: I think I think we could probably stretch that one
Speaker 1: out to a full no problem, because hey, what's better
Speaker 1: than sitting around and listening to a show described the
Speaker 1: way something looks?
Speaker 2: Do it? And since Chuck and I just negotiated whether
Speaker 2: that episode would be a short stuff or a full
Speaker 2: length episode, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to call this a reminder to Sandwich.
Speaker 1: This is from Aaron Burke. Hey, guys, recently found your show.
Speaker 1: I've gotten into it. I started to listen to the
Speaker 1: most recent and then I thought, well, maybe I should
Speaker 1: have the whole experience and start at the beginning. These
Speaker 1: early episodes are a little unsatisfying because I know the
Speaker 1: finely tuned show that you've achieved after fifteen hundred episodes.
Speaker 1: My question is, what would you recommend for new listeners.
Speaker 1: Start at the beginning, work backwards, go to episode one
Speaker 1: seventy seven as of now, I'm starting at day one,
Speaker 1: and that is from Aaron Burke and Erin. I let
Speaker 1: Aaron know which episode this is going to be on
Speaker 1: so he could hear it. But what we recommend is sandwiching.
Speaker 1: That is, listen to the latest one and then listen
Speaker 1: to the earliest one, and then work forwards and backwards
Speaker 1: until you meet in the middle. For the reasons of
Speaker 1: compare and contrast. It's fun to hear the show now
Speaker 1: and how much has changed, but also you don't want
Speaker 1: to miss out on announcements and live show stuff and
Speaker 1: you know changes that happen, although there's really not many.
Speaker 2: No, no, there's no changes whatsoever these days.
Speaker 1: But we think the sandwich method is pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been the recommended version or method for the
Speaker 2: whole time, I think.
Speaker 1: Essentially, right, yeah, but you know, do it how you want.
Speaker 1: That's what we think.
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, each their own, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So who is that Aaron Burke.
Speaker 2: Aaron, however, you listen to the entire catalog of Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know, we hope you enjoy every single minute
Speaker 2: of it. And if you want to be like Aaron
Speaker 2: and get in touch with us and ask us for
Speaker 2: some advice of some sort, do it. You can send
Speaker 2: it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more, podcast to my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.