ARCHITECT AND DESIGNER OF FAMOUS FORM-FITTING CHAIRS

"Extraordinarily Comfortable,"

Although he worked with a variety of fabrics, machinery, and buildings, Charles Eames was best known for the series of chairs that still bear his name. In the 1950s his extraordinarily comfortable chairs, built low and responsive to the body, were snapped up by consumers wanting the new American Modern furniture but wanting comfort, too.

Flunked Architecture.

Born in Saint Louis to a Civil War veteran, Eames won a scholarship to study architecture at Washington University but flunked out, partly because he spent too much time working in one of the city's large architectural firms and partly because the traditional teachers at his university disapproved of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of Eames's idols. In 1929 Eames went to Europe, where he learned about the work of the great German Bauhaus architects. He opened an architectural...