Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Something I've been wondering at as I've been thinking about the Eameses --
and this may have something to do with the closed-in atmosphere of 901 --
is how little of a sense of place you can derive from their work.  They
did nearly all of their work together in southern California from the war
to 1970, and yet there's very little that is specifically Californian that
can be found in their work.  Those 750,000 images we talked about before:
how many of them would you look at and say "oh, that's southern California?"

I grew up in southern California myself -- in fact, I grew up in Pacific
Palisades.  And nothing I've seen in their work, with the exception of
"Blacktop," says to me "oh, that looks just like where I grew up."  The
only other thing I can think of is the crank-operated louvered windows
that you can see in some photographs of the house, which seem to have been
part of most every house built in west LA during the 1950s.
  

    
Very interesting point, Bob. I was thinking along those lines the other 
day -- about how I always forget that they were based in LA, and how weird 
that seems, somehow. I mean, I don't literally forget it, but I don't 
think of them in an LA context. That's part of why Steve Cabella's movie 
"The Hollywood Connection" was such a surprising revelation.
  

    
Well, I think part of it goes back to their desire to universalize. 
Very few of their films even have alot of "contemporary" cars in
them--a sure fire way to date things.  Although the Computer Landscape
film does have some guys with incredible 60s/70s sideburns.
  

    
They universalized very successfully. Just the way their stuff doesn't 
seem "Californian," it doesn't seem "New York" or "Midwest" either. I 
guess this relates closely to the principle about honing off the 
idiosyncrasies until you've arrived at the essential design.

Eames -- as we very briefly discussed at the Exploratorium, I for one (I 
haven't discussed this with rbr but I think he may agree) would like to 
see this topic/interview continue, on an ongoing basis, as a resource and 
a forum for discussion of the Eames work. If you think you could drop 
by once in a while, that'd be great.

There are so many things we haven't touched on yet -- for example, the 
Eameses in India. And many more rich topics. 
  

    

That would be great!
  

    
Well, I am up for it.  I look forward to the comments and if there are
questions for me,  I'll see if I can answer them.  There have been
alot interesting insights and we have only scratched the surface.  It
has been a real pleasure--let's keep going.
  

    
Yay!! 

I hear you'll be speaking at IDEO this week. I'm hoping to be there. My 
son might be able to make it, too. He was sorry to have had to miss the 
Explo event.
  

    
I look forward to seeing you there!  I hope your son can make his way
there.  It should be fun.
  

    
Damn! I can't believe I had the date wrong in my book and missed it. (I 
had it down for tonight. Grrr.)

How did it go?
  

    
Oh, it went very well--thank you, Eames, for coming by. We had a very
appreciative audience, and I was able to show a few shorts before he
showed up. Eames ended with "Design Q & A," which gets more perfect
everytime I see it.

As we discussed over dinner, the CD-ROM "Powers of 10 Interactive" is
incredibly rich. There is so much material there that the title is
incredibly misleading. In addition to "Design Q & A," there is "Goods,"
and many other pieces. Eames said it contains over 3000 pages of text,
much of it not available elsewhere. (Please correct me if I
misrepresent this.


I was also very interested to learn about Eames's own work, and you
have a ready audience if you'd like to describe it here.
  

    
I'm glad it went well. Was anyone else from here there?

And I agree, it'd be great to hear about Eames's work here.
  

    
No other Wellians but me, I'm afraid.
  

    
That's very kind of you to ask, Scott, and, since no one can resist a
platform to mention their own work, I'll be happy to say that I have
been working on a kind of alternative universe called Parallel
California.  I have published one book based on it called Wartime
California.  This is the script of a movie which was ruthlessly
surpressed for inconveniently portraying the conquest of San Francisco
by Los Angeles.  You can subscribe to the monthly newsletter (or order
that book) by visiting www.parallelcalifornia.com. 

Because it is more than just that one battle, but a world where each
county is its own nation.  So all sorts of cultures and societies come
into contact with one another.  There is even one based on that book
Flatland.  All sorts of cool stuff.  The map at that website is
interactive and gives you a bit of the flavor of those nations.

Through the Eames Office I have been able to do some projects that are
creatively mine, including one called 77 Steps about the Emeco chair. 
You can watch it online at:
http://www.eamesoffice.com/contact/emeco.html

Let me know what you all think.
  

    
I love that film!  I saw it at the "Aluminum" show at the Cooper-Hewitt and
watched 5 or 6 times in a row.
  

    
Glad you dug it!

There are a few other clips of mine at www.edemetrios.com if you want
to check them out.  Some old, some new.
  

    
Let me also take the liberty of adding a link to a column I've started
in a local (Greater Mar Vista) paper:
http://www.smmirror.com/volume4/issue2/stories_from_parallel.asp
 concerning the history of Parallel California.  Northern Californians
will be particularly interested.

Also: it seems very likely that the Powers of Ten show will open at
the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park
by the fourth of July.  I'll confirm that as soon as I know for sure.
  

    
Oh, that's excellent.
  

    
Yes, confirmed.  The inspection of Hohfeld Hall is complete and today
(Saturday 6/29/02) will be the first day of Powers of Ten at the
Academy.

Enjoy!
  

    
Cool! Are you going to be speaking there at some point?
  

    
Yes, the plan is to do it sometime in the fall.  Most likely
September.  I'll post it as soon as I know.
  

    
Thanks!

I have a question. It's sort of a long story, though.

The other day I was in a midcentury furniture shop yacking with the owner 
and I mentioned that I'd seen some fake Eames chairs with a terrible, 
oily-looking, thick refinish job on the shells. He said, Well, you know 
they're reproducing the actual shells now. I said Oh, I did not know that.

He went on to say that Modernica had "bought all the molds and machinery" 
from Herman Miller and was "reissuing" the fiberglass chairs. I said, You 
mean this is with Herman Miller's knowledge? He said Oh yes, they're 
licensed by Herman Miller.

I expressed incredulity. He couldn't remember where he had read about 
this. He told me the name of the shop in SF that carries these 
"authentic," "reissued" chairs and it turned out to be the place I'd seen 
what I'd thought were badly refinished (real) shells on Modernica bases.

I pressed for more details. I said I found it hard, maybe impossible to 
believe that Herman Miller had authorized Modernica to sell "authentic" 
fiberglass chairs, given the long relationship between HM and the Eames 
office, etc., and then he said "Oh, that was in the article, it said these 
chairs were being made by special arrangement with the Eames Office."

I said I would ask Eames Demetrios about this, because I didn't believe 
it. He said Hey, I'm just selling furniture, ya know? and changed the 
subject quickly.

The chairs aren't being sold as authentic Eames chairs, as far as I could 
tell. That is, the little tags don't say Eames. If what that dealer said 
was true, they would have tags saying they were authentic, licensed 
Eames reissues, I'm sure.

So, is there any truth to the story about Herman Miller and the Eames 
Office approving these "reissues"? I guess that's my main question. (I 
have more questions, but they depend on the answer.)

Thanks...
  

    
I have an Eames chair and ottoman given to me by my Dad. He bought it in
1962, the year of my birth. Some time in the mid seventies he sat down
rather hard and broke it right in two. He called up Herman Miller to get it
repaired and they expressed shock and disgust that it had broken, and
immediately replaced the broken part (which was the entire seat). Pretty
cool for a fifteen year old chair. Fast forward to 1993 or so. I sat down
hard and broke the chair right in two. I wanted to repair it so I could
still have the heirloom. Again, they expressed shock that it had broken and
immediately replaced it. It's incredible to me that a company would stand by
their products for thirty some years. The only bad news is that the chair
doesn't exactly match the ottoman, and isn't really a valuable antique
anymore. But I still have it in the living room. I don't use it much but I'm
looking forward to passing it on to my kids.
  

    
What a great testimonial to Herman Miller's customer service. I 
think the story about why the chair and ottoman don't quite match is 
almost worth losing the antiquity of the chair. And after all, eventually 
it'll be an antique heirloom anyway.
  

    
I found out more about the new fiberglass shells, and I think my questions 
have been answered. Apparently the dealer who told me about the alleged 
licensing had it all wrong.

It's still a little weird, though. According to a source I pretty 
much believe to be reliable, the shells are manufactured by Zenith in LA, 
which is still run by the same man who made the original shells ~50 years 
ago. A new mold was made from a rope-edge DAX shell, and the edge was 
reshaped to eliminate the rope shape but leave a bit of a ridge around the 
edge for strength; and the new shells have the Modernica logo molded into 
the bottom. According to my source (this part I wonder about) "the design 
patents have run out, and the Zenith guy holds the engineering patents."

Another interesting thing I saw today in my little fact-finding 
expedition: some chairs that I strongly suspect were new, Modernica 
dowel-base and rocking chairs, but carefully aged (like the fake 
antiques you sometimes see in shady antiques stores) to resemble 
originals.
  

    
Good detective work, fom.  Modernica's chairs are not authorized in
any way by the Eames Office or Herman Miller.  I am certainly
disappointed that anyone associated with Zenith would work on
unauthorized chairs.  The real victims are people who think they are
getting something authentic.

BTW: My talk at the Academy of Sciences will be at 7:30 PM on Thursday
September 26th in the Morrison Auditorium.  And you can check out the
Powers of Ten exhibit out at the same time.  There's a 360 degree
quicktime VR at http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/powers_of_ten/#intro
if you want to see something of the exhibit online.