Charles Eames House of Cards, above,
bought in NYC at the Whitney, I think, in 1973;
I bought them on my first traveling
assignment as a young architect,
to management school at IBM in New York.
I chose them as they are not easy,
and will stack them up and try again.
Under drawing below with messy graphite; watercolors added above.
It brought back so many memories!

I stalked the Eames’ at their home when I was 19 with my boyfriend.  They were used to students stalking them.  They were gracious; we were invited in for a very short hello.
They were my idols and I wanted to be like them, and wanted to work with my husband / relationship as they did with each other — they had a huge impact on my future choices.  I also met Charles as  young working architect for IBM; I have many interesting brochures from those days which were in-house pamphlets.  I sat next to Ray on a plane flight to NYC after he died; same outfit she always wore, full skirt and ponytail with a bow, but all in black.

I was able to tour their studio in Venice California as a student.  So much stuff — collections of toys, gadgets, models.

I also was fortunate to see the art installations on American Revolution Bicentennial, The World of Franklin & Jefferson at IBM in NYC.  The most memorable and stunning installation was their very cool collection of “things” made into art at the IBM World Headquarters: seeds, stamps, grasses, bans, each carefully collected and viewed in plexiglass boxes.

Good memories, rubbing up against the gods of design.

Update:
Some people have never seen the cards.  This is an image from Amazon.
The original size (and the MOMA size)
was the size of a deck of cards, and
they have eight slits in them that allow
you to attach them one to the other.
They came out with a giant set in the 50’s, and a medium size in the 70’s (I think).
So you build little huts and so forth with them — yes, fun. The sides are printed with images of his collections in his studios.

Images in Stillman & Birn Alpha journal with Pentalic pencil, a Preppie pen with Polar Brown Noodler’s ink, and Daniel Smith and QoR watercolor paints.

I agree to Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or,
visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms.
My images/blog posts may be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Thanks to Wikipedia for the image of the home.  Give $$ to support Wiki!