Born on June 17, 1907, Charles Eames was a design world tour de force. Working with his wife, Ray, he was a champion of systems design before such a thing even had a name, and together the pair delighted in working across media, shooting films, manufacturing furniture, designing houses, training clowns. You know. The usual. Back in 2007, the Eames’ grandson took us on a whistlestop tour of just some of their achievements, including showing some of their prototypes and missteps. Not mistakes, Eames Demetrios notes firmly. “They’re the things you try out to make things work better.” Though he does acknowledge drily: “Some of them were probably terrible chairs.”

“The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem.” Charles Eames

All images courtesy of Eames Demetrios.