Setting the Record Straight About the Eames House

Remembering the agreeable afternoon spent with Leon Whiteson at the Eames House and reading the opening paragraphs of his article about it, I couldn’t imagine where the misleading headline “New Life for Landmark Fixer-Upper” came from (Aug. 14). “New Life” disagreeably and falsely implies that earlier the house had been dead, whereas actually we celebrate the life with which Charles and Ray Eames infused the house from the start. From its construction, they maintained it beautifully. A landmark it certainly is, and treasured by our family. It is deserving of the work that we in our turn have done to keep it in mint condition, but the term “fixer-upper” has never been remotely appropriate.

Appreciating the genuine interest and positive support shown by Whiteson, I am moved to clarify a few points in the article:

--The words “rundown” (house) and “overgrown” (grounds) have never been applicable.

--The house is not open to visitors or tours. In the future, we hope that we might be able to permit visitors by appointment, but even then just the exterior would be open.

--While Ray dressed beautifully and with a most elegant sense of color and texture, she was not “always dressed to match the current interior design.”

--”The molded plastic chair that came out of an experiment with limb splints . . . “ sentence is confusing and inaccurate. The fact is that the molded fiberglass chair came after the molded plywood chair that had won the Museum of Modern Art Furniture competition and was established as a “classic of contemporary design” long before Herman Miller marketed it. Furthermore, during WW II, Charles’ and Ray’s work on techniques for molding plywood was applied to making limb splints for wounded servicemen as well as a proposed stretcher and plywood glider nose cone.

--The Eameses designed for film director Billy Wilder the chaise lounge that later went into production, not the lounge chair and the ottoman. Wilder will attest to the peculiar resilience of that myth.

--A Charles and Ray Eames scholarship fund has been established at Cranbrook Academy of Art which is in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, not Bloomington, Ill. Charles was a design instructor at Cranbrook, not a student, when they met. Ray did not simply “want to be a painter”--she had studied with Hans Hoffman in New York for several years and Ray was a painter.

I appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight. I also want to thank The Times and Leon Whiteson in particular for their kind interest and concern for the Eames House as a landmark of international importance.

LUCIA EAMES DEMETRIOS

Venice

Lucia Demetrios is the daughter of Charles and Ray Eames.