The Eames Translated their Process of Discovery into Creative Work

Above: Ray and Charles Eames selecting slides for the exhibition, “Photography & the City”, 1968. © 2011 Eames Office, LLC.

Laura and I just watched The Architect and the Painter [Amazon], a pretty good documentary on Charles and Ray Eames. Among various poignant thoughts was this powerful insight from Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of TED, describing Charles Eames’ educational work for IBM and others:

“Sell your expertise and you have a limited repertoire. Sell your ignorance and you have an unlimited repertoire. He was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject. The journey of not knowing to knowing was his work.” — Richard Saul Wurman on Charles Eames

To me, those words hit close to home. It was with that same mindset that I founded The Mid-Century Modernist: to translate what I learn about this era of design into something that might be enlightening to others. As this site’s recent publish dates painfully indicate, we’ve been on a long hiatus. But we haven’t stopped learning, so very soon we’ll try again to live up to our mission.