Eames for the Everyman

No great work of modern furniture design is without a conceptual superstructure. As director of the Eames Office Gallery and Store, and grandson of Charles and Ray, Eames Demetrios can offer an explication of that particularly Eamesian precept called “the honest use of materials.”

“This chair is not embarrassed about being made out of wood,” Demetrios says, stopping at the classic molded plywood lounge chair known in some circles as the “potato chip,” and in Eames nomenclature as LCW. “It shows it very openly, and without constraint.” Indeed, no modest vinyl cushion or fig-leaf upholstery shields the LCW’s plywood nakedness.

Established in a cramped Santa Monica storefront, the Eames Office Gallery and Store presents a distillation of Charles and Ray’s oeuvre, as much the rage now as it was in the ‘40s and ‘50s, as well as commercial yearnings that border on Warhollian. Three stacked TV monitors burble the Eames’ fanciful experimental movies: a clown painting his face and chomping on a cigar; a bravura national aquarium never to be built; a ballet of spinning tops. A G3 has been loaded with Demetrios’ own contribution: “The Powers of 10 Interactive” CD-ROM--”six parallel journeys in scale, from 10 to the minus-18th power seconds to 32 billion years.” It was inspired by Charles and Ray’s mind-blowing short film that zoomed from way out in the universe toward the atom in the molecule of a human hand. For travelers either disoriented or famished by this dizzying journey, the gallery sells L.A. Streetwise maps and Zagat restaurant guides.

Blown-up diagrams and photographs of Eames chairs, a prototype stretcher molded for the wounded of World War II and Charles Eames’ head-scratching slogans (“We Don’t Take Pleasure Seriously Enough”) compete for the visitor’s attention, as does the merchandise: DCW chair mouse pads, “Glimpses of the U.S.A.” and “Computer House of Cards” T-shirts, Eames furniture at 20% off the list price, “Eames Lounge Chair” and “Toccata for Toy Trains” flip books, Eames-patterned silk ties and a 75-cent pencil not embarrassed by being made out of wood and decorated with tiny LCM, LCW, DCM and DCW chairs. Eames Demetrios contemplates an expansion into fabrics: “We’re working out a deal now to bring out some textile patterns that were never done in such small quantities.”

The Office Gallery and Store was in part conceived to spare the Eames’ landmark case study house in Pacific Palisades the indignities of such commerce: the last-minute Christmas shoppers who would show up on the hunch that Demetrios or his mother might have a few decks of cards or video compilations lying around. “The house is a special place,” Eames Demetrios says. “It’s not where you go to pick up presents, even if it’s one we’re selling.”

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Eames Office Gallery and Store, 2665 Main St., Suite E, Santa Monica; (310) 396-5991; https://www.eamesoffice.com