Wright Auction

As seasoned veterans of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, Robert Staples and Barbara Fahs Charles together built a life around good design. Business and life partners, they established their own firm, Staples & Charles Ltd., in Washington D.C. in 1973. As one of the earliest firms to exclusively specialize in design and exhibition planning for museums, Staples & Charles Ltd. quickly expanded from working with the Smithsonian to partnering with national and international institutions.

Robert Staples was hired by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957—part-time, to "carve patterns and sweep the floor," as he put it. Though initially reluctant to join the firm (he was still enrolled at the University of Southern California and already had a job drafting aviation parts), Staples would soon abandon his other pursuit to devote himself wholly to the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. During his first seven years there, furniture projects, such as the Aluminum Group and Tandem Seating, were his primary focus, but after spending weeks in India on a project about Jawaharlal Nehru, he found exhibitions to be a more interesting design challenge. Beginning with Mathematica: A World of Numbers...and Beyond, which opened in 1961 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles, Staples worked on each of the major Eames exhibitions.

Barbara Fahs Charles would become a member of the team in 1967, acting as researcher and coordinator for several of the Eameses' later exhibitions, including Photography & The City: The Evolution of an Art and a Science and A Computer Perspective. She has written extensively on museum and exhibition design, including contributions to the Washington Post, Museum News, and Ephemera Journal.

The first toy released by Eames Office in 1951 was simply, a box. Originating from the shipping carton the ESU came in, the colorful Herman Miller-branded box encouraged children to build an imaginative world through the limitless possibilities presented by a simple form. Following the box was, The Toy, produced by Tigrett Enterprises in 1951. The Toy consisted of wooden dowels and colorful fabric panels, with which one could build enclosed geometric forms—only a slight step above the simplicity of the box. Much like their furniture designs, clarity, ease and optimism characterized the Eameses early toys.

Throughout the 1950s, The Eames Office would release a slew of delightful and forward-thinking toys, premised on the integrity of construction and materials and the deep belief in humans' (and especially, children's) natural inclination toward creativity.