"Charles Eames isn't resting on his chair"

By Walter McQuade

February 1975

Excerpts: "How the Eames magic is created is difficult to track. At any given moment, he has from twenty to thirty men and women, mostly quite young, on his payroll. Their skills range from woodworking to the production of fine color prints. Eames will wander by to hunch over a table and talk twenty minutes with a writer about a section of an exhibition. He'll then perhaps go into the furniture room and confer on the shape of a casting for a chair base, then to the photography wing to man a movie camera for still another project. He switches quickly from one matter to another when necessary, keeping many mental channels tuned in simultaneously -- but he makes very few quick decisions. One of his staff says he uses his people like fingers of his hands."