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Charles Eames

American designer (1907-1978)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ170411
Source-derived summary

Charles Ormond Eames Jr. (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) was an American designer, architect and filmmaker. In professional partnership with his wife Ray-Bernice Kaiser Eames, he made groundbreaking contributions in the fields of architecture, furniture design, industrial design, manufacturing and the photographic arts.

Biography

Childhood

Charles was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Charles Eames Sr., a railway security officer, and Marie Adele Celine Eames (née Lambert) on June 17, 1907. He had one elder sibling, a sister called Adele. Charles attended Yeatman High School and developed an early interest in architecture and photography.

Education

Eames studied architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis on an architecture scholarship. After two years of study, he left the university.

Editorial summary

“Charles Eames” enters the record as american designer (1907-1978). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Eames and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1907, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1907-06-17. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Charles, Eames and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Charles Eames” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Charles, Eames and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q170411. VIAF identifies the subject as 15576677. The Library of Congress control number is n79128113. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907 and 1978.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Charles Eames”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Charles Eames primary sources, Charles Eames archive and Charles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charles Eames”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Charles Eames” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.