The Films of
Charles & Ray
Eames

» introduction
» blacktop
» toccata for toy trains
» house
» what is design?
» glimpses of usa
» kaleidoscope jazz chair
» spirit of st. louis
» powers of ten
» tops
» timeline
» author information
» bibliography

“We have not supposed there is a poetry of ideas.”
– Charles Eames

Chuck Pratt
Architecture 4395
The Constructive Vision
Prof. Ed Baum
Fall 2003

Charles’ father was a Pinkerton Security Agent at the St. Louis railway station, and the railroad was an important part of Charles’ boyhood in St. Louis. As an adult he was intrigued by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century toy trains, which were made in all kinds of materials and sizes. The gift from Billy Wilder of an Ives locomotive, the “Grand Duke,” stimulated Charles to begin acquiring train elements for a film that would make a point about the unselfconscious use of material, a favorite theme in all Eames work. A number of sets were drawn and built by the office staff, and the entire film was shot on an eight-foot tabletop in the studio at the Eames House. In this film, Charles made full use of his love of shooting close-ups of details. He used the camera to manipulate the relative size of the trains, which in reality are of many different sizes, so that they appear close in scale.

(Eames Design; Neuhart, Neuhart & Eames)