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.

In 1960, notable textile artist and interior designer Alexander Girard brought to life La Fonda del Sol, a Latin-American-themed restaurant located on the ground floor of the Time & Life Building in New York City. Commissioned by innovative restaurateur Joseph Baum, Girard designed the opulent interior, evocative of a contemporary branded space­, to transport guests to an imagined world through extraordinary decoration and attention to detail.  

La Fonda del Sol was a symbol of Latin America visualized through bold geometric patterns and vibrant color combinations. Girard designed nearly all the visual elements of the restaurant from matchboxes and tableware to menus and typography among many others.

He drew inspiration from personal interest in Latin culture and history, and his passion for the art and ritual of dining. In collaboration with Girard, Charles and Ray Eames designed the La Fonda pedestal chairs for the space with a shorter seat height to allow direct view of the tableware.

The restaurant featured a melding of cultures represented through elements including a Mexican ceramic tile fountain, marble from Cuba, carved wooden doorways from Brazil, and a Pre-Columbian stylized sun motif that hung above the adobe-enclosed cocktail lounge. Objects from his extensive personal collection of Central and South American folk art adorned the walls and he insured great care was taken to represent the cultures with detail and respect.

In 1962, the Architectural League of New York awarded Girard for his execution of La Fonda del Sol. While the restaurant closed nearly a decade later, Alexander Girard continues to be celebrated for his unique design sensibility and the lush, immersive environments he produced.