Eames Institute / Collector's Circle
On May 30, 2026 a group of Eames collectors convened at the Eames Institute in Richmond, California. Lovingly called the Eames Geek meeting by some. Needless to say, there was a lot of looking under chairs.
The collection has 40,000 objects and counting. Only a fraction of it is on display. In fact, only a couple thousand have been cataloged up to this point. Some pieces have yet to be moved from remote storage facilities.
Daniel Ostroff , The Dr. Pratapaditya Pal Chief Scholar, took us on a tour of the collection.
This is not your average DCM connection.
Time-Life Chair in a bronze finish.
The glides are also bronze.
For the shell nuts.
Custom glitter vinyl.
The Eames office had to approve all the fiberglass colors before they went into production.
Here is the sample from July 25, 1952.
Paper prototype for a side shell.
One of the few places prototypes are truly prototypes.
I mean, PROTO-TYPES.
Prototype for the gold-leaf covered dowel base table at The Eames House.
670 wood models
It goes on and on!
Llisa Demetrios, Co-founder & The Lucia Eames Chief Curator at the Eames Institute. Llisa led the second part of the tour, which covered the life and work of Ray and Charles. Being their granddaughter, she shared a number of special stories about growing up around them.
Her mother Lucia is the angel, seen here with a bow and arrow, who kept this collection together. We are forever indebted to her and the rest of the Eames family for this collection.
After Ray passed in 1988, the contents of the Eames Office were moved out of 901. Around 1.5 million 2D items (letters, plans and photos) were donated to the Library of Congress. The story I have always heard is that museums in the United States didn't want or were unable to take on the 3D collection, so Vitra acquired it. That is true, but that consisted of only 1,000 items. With a collection of 40,000 pieces, the Eames family obviously held onto to a massive amount of the contents of the office. Thankfully Ray liked to hold onto things! (see Ray's drawers in this post from 2012).
This area is dedicated to the life of Ray and Charles.
Drawings by Charle are on the left and paintings by Ray are on the right, with Organic Design Case Good Cabinets below. Llisa told us her mother was really into the Organic Design cabinets.
A card from Lee (Krasner) Jackson.
Molded Plywood Lounge Chair Prototype (1945). This is a recent acquisition by the Eames Institute.
Ray for scale.
Photo: Eames Office, 1946
I've seen the pictures, but this is beyond words in person.
Read Ostroff's article on the production version of the Eames lounge chair, here. The excerpt from a letter from Ray to Charles talking about the 670 back support design is great insight into how they worked together.
The boxes contain personal collections, props from the Eames films and...
Toy prototypes!
The work section.
Wartime plywood
I wonder why they didn't stick with the rectangular mount?
This would really help me with my book storage problem.
The curved front crossmember on the three leg DCM frame is beautiful.
Charles and Eero
You know what this is. I've never seen one this close that wasn't under plastic.
Remember that one time that I tried to document all the splint sculptures made by Ray? See that here. I believe this is the one that belonged to Lucia.
Ray and Charlee's business cards.
I could have done a whole post just on the ephemera
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In addition to the tour, there was a collector's roundtable. Everyone introduced themselves and talked about their first Eames purchase. There were people who have been at it since the 80's and at least one person grew up with it in their house. A few were relatively new collectors who were already deep into the minutiae.
There were also presentations by some of the collectors who shared pieces from their collections.
I'm not sure what everyone is looking at here. Maybe someone mentioned that I think the 670/671 is the least Eames-like chair in the whole production line. I've only had one since I've been collecting and it only stayed with me for a few days before getting rid of it.
I sat in the first row, so sorry for the bad angles below.
This presentation included a comparison of full rope edge and partial rope edge on Zenith fiberglass shells.
God bless the Eames Geeks!
There was also an analysis of edge thickness on various production dates.
It's these changes and refinements in the Eames design process that makes collecting it "fun" for a lot of us.
Vince Bravo pulled out his Eames holiday card to Alexander Girard.
Maz showed off his empty Eames film can.
I'm jealous.
I told you there was a lot of looking under chairs. Also, Daniel cheated and showed more than three photos. He also scolded everyone (in a nice way) for restoring their Eames furniture--or even cleaning it for that matter. I subscribe to this Ostroff philosophy, as I sit here at my desk on a very blown out Soft Pad.
At the same time, I love an honest old repair or in this case, a modification. Anthony shared this chair where someone drilled holes around the top edge of a fiberglass chair and threaded a leather strap through it. The thought is that it would act as a cushion when sitting against a wall. A "Wall Saver" if you will.
We had lunch and it wasn't a bowl of flowers.
This was such a great day. Much gratitude to the Eames Institute, Llisa, Daniel and Todd for putting this together.
You too can visit the Eames Archives. Information on that is here.
The Eames fun continues...
I'm going to do another post on the future home of the Eames Institute in Novato.