American artist and designer Ray Kaiser Eames was born in 1912 in Sacramento, California. She studied painting with Hans Hofmann in New York, then began assisting Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Charles and Ray married in 1941 and moved to California, where they continued their furniture design work with molding plywood and using sculptural curves that were influenced by Ray’s early immersion in abstract art. Production was later taken over by Herman Miller, Inc., who continues to produce Eames furniture in the United States today.

Over their careers, Charles was assumed to be the main creative force, even though he spoke about their design process in terms of ​“we,” ​“us” and ​“ours.” Even so, an untrue perception persisted that Ray was Charles’ assistant, and/​or that their work divided along gender roles — that he worked on architecture and form; while her role focused on color and décor. Fortunately, it is now widely understood that the Eames’s working relationship was, ​“an equal and total alliance.”