Thelen: [Feedback] Now why does it doing that, is it because the mics are too close to each other? That seemed to be… Franz
Thelen: And you like the beach? Staples
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Thelen: And you like the beach? Staples: Well it was at the beach. Thelen: Oh at the beach, that’s cool. Staples: Just a block or two away from the ocean. [Feedback] when I was living in Hermosa Beach we were always, maybe three or four blocks from the water. Of course I was not particularly sportsy type of guy at the time. I did like the beach and my bum friends who played volleyball and that kind of stuff. Thelen: So did you play volleyball? Staples: Yes I did. Thelen: Did you surf? Staples: I did not surf. At the time the boards were like twelve feet long and you had to be really strong to move them. Deal with them so. [Feedback] so I did not do that kind of surfing. I belly-surfed and that kind of stuff. Thelen: You like that world? Staples: Yes, sure. Well I did not know any other world. But I had a nice group of friends; we played bridge and that kind of stuff. Thelen: So I picture you now in college and you have moved over to Eames and you have started to get involved there. At some point your lives are going to intersect. Staples: Well Eames was a multitalented office. If you know the history of Eames at all, he did furniture which is what he’s known for. But he did films and some architecture and that kind of stuff. He was interested in furniture when I first came. But then his interest moved more toward information and communications. Thelen: While you were there, sixteen or seventeen years. Staples: So I got more interested in the communications side and exhibitions and then we, he had a nice long run with IBM as a consultant at IBM. Then we did a project called Mathamatica. I was responsible for getting it installed and doing it. I did not do the design work so much as the physical. Thelen: I do not quite follow can you explain that a little more. This project were you involved in a big way with it? What was it? Staples: Well it is a five thousand square foot exhibition. Thelen: One more time, what? Staples: Five thousand square foot exhibition, I am guessing at that I cannot remember now exactly. It dealt with mathematics from the point of history as well as the playfulness of mathematics. Multiplication cubes, (inaudible) train at ran, around both sides, minnow surface machine, bubble machine. My hand, I was pretty good so that’s where I moved to, from furniture to this exhibition business. Thelen: So help me, I would like to hear more about the transition. How did you go from designing something like this table to doing Mathematica? Staples: Well, when there was a very serious exodus at the Eames office just as I was coming up. Fifty-nine I would say. The Moscow Fair. Thelen: We are looking at a picture of the book on Eames of the Mathematica exhibit. Staples: It was a trendsetter too. Charles: It was before any of the science centers and there are two versions that still exist of Mathematica up at Boston Science Museum and at New York Science I think in Flushing Meadows or someplace like that. And Oppenhiemer who started the Exploratorium talks about Mathematica. Thelen: This was sounding like the Exploratorium. Charles: Very, that this was influential to him. I would also say that this was the first time I know of a scholar, Ray Redheffer, taking his whole sabbatical to work on an exhibition. It is a very influential and I think important exhibition. And a little amazing that now, fifty years old it is still viable in museums. Thelen: Wow, so you were doing furniture design and you got to this. What were some of the things that led to that evolution? Staples: Well, I guess that Deborah Susman that was there when I was at the Eames office did most of the graphic work, but I then made the graphic mathematic wall there, which goes from thirteen or fourteen hundred to nineteen sixties. About the famous mathematicians through history and I was in charge of the production of that and getting it installed. Once I was in the quote unquote exhibitions side of his office, I just wanted to stay there. I did, in fact, do furniture off and on. Then we got a nice project to do, Nauru exhibition, Nauru in India and I went there for. Again, well what happened, Albinson and Dale Bower and Peter Pierce all left the office about the same time. So I became number one. Thelen: In the late fifties. Staples: Early sixties. And it was great, I really enjoyed it. I got to go places I never imagined. Thelen: But India were not there two people they asked to go ahead of you. Can you talk about the Nauru show and how you got involved in it? Staples: Well I guess yes, Gore Nashville was one I think. Well I cannot remember who else. But they finally ended up asking me if I would like to go. And I was going to go for two weeks and I stayed ten, in India. We were going to build it in New York and they decided to build the show in India because of economic issues. Then we put it all on a boat and shipped it to New York. Then I went back to New York and engineered getting it in. Thelen: But in India in Omnebod, you were responsible for getting it built again, dealing with all the craftspeople. Staples: Right, now speaking a word of Hindi. [Laughter] I was able through grunts and strains and gestures get them to do what needed to be done. Thelen: If I got this right, this is like four years after you entered the firm, here you are running the exhibition side? Did I get that right? Staples: It probably was not quite that dramatic. I mean I think that furniture was a diminishing interest, exhibitions was an increasing interest and I was just in that cusp that I moved from one to the other. And on the design side. There were people doing the research, but on the design side Bob becomes the senior designer. Thelen: Actually I would like to get kind of an overview of that. There is the exhibition section and then there is design and what? Well, you go ahead. In this earlier period what it is like. Staples: That was not any separation. I mean it was just you did everything. You made films, design. Thelen: Within exhibitions. But Bob, Deborah Susman, was senior graphic designer. This was just like in my view, the way exhibits are developed today. Ray Redheffer and I think was working with was Glen there. So Glen Fleck was intellectual side. Very interesting side. Thelen: What does intellectual side mean in this context? Staples: That he did not do furniture. [Laughter] Charles: He doesn’t get his hands dirty. Glen only has a high school degree. Very bright guy. Found school boring, only graduates, according to his story, because he went on the school grounds every day and read books outside of this building, but they could not call him a truant. Anyway, so there is Redheffer the scholar from UCLA working on Mathematica. There is Glen, there is probably other people, I was not there, doing research, finding parts [feedback] you know all that kind of gathering of information. Then there is the 3D side, physically both designing it and is Gordon there then, Gordon Ashby, Paul, Peter? Who’s doing the 3D side besides you? Staples: Dale. Charles: Dale Bowers on Mathematica. Staples: Dale and Don were all involved in that. Charles: So Don’s still there, Don Albinson. Thelen: I cannot quite follow the evolution of the firm and because of that how that became an exhibition. How it got from designing tables to making exhibitions. How it got from - I assume a commercial process of designing and selling furniture, to a business of collaborating with a scholar from UCLA on an exhibition like this. Staples: By the time that Mathematica was built, Charles was famous. His line of furniture was successful. Eames plastic chairs, wire chair, the lounge chair, all of those things were making Herman Miller rich. Charles was getting royalties for all of this. Charles had a very interesting way of doing business. He would cultivate these major figures in the financial world, like the president of IBM or Westinghouse, they would help build the things that he was involved in. it is kind of like the Medicis; you have the people who pay for things and the people who do those things. Charles: I think Elliot Noise is very key in introductions. Elliot Noise was an industrial design. And George Nelson introduces Charles to Herman Miller. George Nelson, and I may be wrong on some chronologies, but Nelson I believe was a design advisors to Herman Miller and that is the connection that Eames to Herman Miller. Elliot Noise, I think at some point, is curator of design at MoMA [Museum of Modern Art], but is also advisor on design to IBM and Westinghouse and places like that. I think Elliot Noise… Staples: A conduit. Charles: A conduit in here who is saying to somebody like IBM you know you ought to talk to Charles Eames. Meanwhile Charles has worked in the film industry. Staples: For Billy Wilder. Charles: For Billy Wilder, so he gets into film, knows that end. Charles is just a bright bright guy. Thelen: And responding to a lot of things around him. Charles: Right, he’s in Hollywood and so on. He’s already playing with film. People do animations. I think the first IBM project is…. Staples: Information machine. Charles: Information machine. What’s information machine? Staples: Dolores Connad. Charles: No that’s movable airport. Is not Dolores Connad. Oh, information machine in 1956 for Brussels? Staples: You have to look it up. Charles: Okay. No but I lost track of something here. Thelen: We are getting a sense of how this field is evolving. Or how you are evolving and the field is evolving out of first a world of industrial, first furniture, then industrial design. It is moving with Hollywood, with corporations. Charles: And designers can do anything. Thelen: Wow, I think that’s. Charles: I think Charles would say that. Staples: He did not like being a designer. Charles: Or artist. Staples: He was a problem-solver. Charles: And a craftsman. He would use the word craftsman. Thelen: So designers can do anything. Staples: Says Barbara. Thelen: I heard Barbara, but I am trying to think about the implications of that. Charles: Well architects think they can do anything. Staples: Well they do everything. Charles: And Charles trained as an architect. So another connection is that he’s worked with Aero Saarinen. But, no, I think Charles comes from a background that says that you address a problem and you can solve it. Staples: Charles went to Cranbrook and at the same time that Charles was there, many of the well-known designers of that vintage were at Cranbrook. He carried on these relationships between Aero Saarinen, who did the subway here? Harry Weise. It was a crossroads of bright people. Charles: Florence Knoll. Thelen: Is that the feeling you had as you were back here in the late fifties and early sixties that you among a bunch of bright people, not limited by traditional lines and exploring different ways of design? Staples: I guess so. Thelen: I do not want to put words in your mouth. Staples: Please. Thelen: But how did you experience? Staples: The thing that you know, somebody would knock at the door and it would be Gregory Peck. [Laughter] it was just Charles had, you know, a large network of bright people. Bucky Fuller and all of these. Charles: But it was also a way, you know, the office was an in old garage in Venice. So people came to Charles and while he did travel and went other places, this was a world in that building. And, you know, the film cameras could be there, the furniture there, the graphics… Staples: Aquarium. Charles: Yes, the aquarium, stuff would happen and if you survived it, you know, you would be pushed to wherever help was needed. I never did furniture, but I did have to do animation one time. Bob I think did some of everything at various times. But go on sorry. Thelen: No, I think this is really incredibly helpful; I am getting a great sense. Staples: It is such a diverse place and as Barbara said, you had to do everything. You were not pigeon-holed to be a designer of furniture. You would be shifted into intellectual areas [pause] sometimes you would excel, sometimes you would not excel. But I could spin tops. One of the things that Charles appreciated of my talents. Charles: Spinning tops. Staples: Yes, because he was fascinated by tops and he did two films about tops, one was Buddy Collet us music and one I think was Velma Bernstein’s music. And it is all about the spinning; it is sort of mathematical puzzle. Thelen: Was the culture collaborative or hierarchical? When you showed up for work and you had a challenge was this a place where everyone would go talking to everyone else, was it a place where you worked in your cubical? What was the workplace like? Staples: Well there were not cubicles but it was, it certainly had divisions. There was no questions about it. The building was about the size of this building and not like the look of this building. The shop, which was a sort of table saw and all of that stuff was in the back and Charles’ office was in the front and between were these little fiefdoms. Thelen: But there were fiefdoms? Staples: Yes, I mean Glen had this little office in the middle next to the kitchen. There was an area that was graphics, areas that were a little more research; I guess I worked in graphics. Thelen: Was your basic memory of it that you were working by yourself solving problems on your own terms or is your memory that you talked a lot with other people? You never solved them on your own terms; you solved them on Charles’ terms. Thelen: So in a way it was hierarchical? Staples: Absolutely. Charles: He weighed in on everything. Staples: He did. Not always when he should of and not always as completely as he should have, but he was there for every turn of the page. Ray, his wife, was trained as an artist. I think she went also to Cranbrook. Charles: They met at Cranbrook. Staples: She was sort of the aesthetic eye, but she was not very good at making decisions, so it was ultimately Charles who would make decisions. One of my classic examples about Ray, I do not know if you know Fermayo, their house, but it is an industrial vocabulary. Its iron and glass and it is a box. There are trusses up overhead and there was a ladder and Ray insisted that I tell her the three places this ladder could be, of which there was only one logical place to put the ladder and I told her that one first and then she insisted that I tell her the others. It ended up where I told where it should be, it was out of the way, but it was still there. She just demanded irrational things, but she was sweet, but she could not make decisions. Thelen: So he would bring in the business, the tasks. And he would come to someone like you and say we have a contract… Staples: Sometimes it would not even be a contract, there was no, he was a poor businessman but he was shrewd at his business. Thelen: I am just trying to get a sense of the flow here. He would be the link to the outside world who would bring in something from Westinghouse or Gregory Peck or whatever and then he would come to you and say he would think you were the right person to take charge, or you and one other person to take charge of a project. Staples: Yes. Thelen: And then you would do it, only from time to time, or it sounds like pretty often, you would talk about it with him. Staples: Yes, you would talk about it with him and one of the most gut wrenching periods was when we were going to do a school seating system that was furniture for classrooms and stuff like that. The university has these pits where people are… Thelen: Lecture theaters or something like that. Staples: So they needed furniture for something like that. Charles: Herman Miller. Staples: So Herman Miller had the need. Don had gone, left Charles in fifty-nine or so, maybe sixty-one because he was at Mathematica. Unfortunately he left under bad feelings, went off and created his own little design world and Herman Miller kept him busy doing problem solving in the furniture world. They gave him the issue of school seating. Once the Eames plastic shell on this new seating system, then all of a sudden Charles got testy, how can you call this Albinson furniture when you put an Eames chair on it? Because Charles had so much clout with Herman Miller they moved the project from Albinson to the office. We then spent weeks or months doing modifications to what Albinson had already done. Changing the shape and contour of things, it was going to be die-cast aluminum. Charles did not like the configurations that we had, fluff them up a bit, make them beefier looking, which is the worst thing you can do with die-casting. Thelen: Why is that? Staples: The speed at which you make a product is where the profit is. Aluminum, when it gets thick, it cools slowly. You have cross-section like that as opposed to like that - a thin rectangle as opposed to a big fat oval. We had all of our drawings done and ready to go and we met Bob Blake who was Herman Miller and I met Charles in New York City before he went off on one of his world tours and he just trounced us. Back to the drawing board we went. Thelen: Literally. Staples: Literally, we had made arrangements to go to 3M Minnesota, a die-cast factor. Herman Miller had sold some of these projects to universities. There is a lot at risk and Charles just did notthe truth or he did not see the advance technology as being the solution. So he walked back to sandcasting. Thelen: Even though it meant he’d lose money. Staples: He did not lose any money. Herman Miller. So Herman Miller had sold some of this furniture based upon Albinson’s practical configurations. So they didn’t… Thelen: Why do you think he made that decision? Staples: He did not like what he saw. Charles: He did not like the aesthetic look of it. Thelen: So it was aesthetic. Staples: I am sure it was. I mean it has to be that. Charles: It was structural issues. Staples: So anyway that was the most annoying part of my job at the time. Was having this sort of…I mean he said to me one time “Oh we need around here is a good furniture designer,” but at my desk. Thelen: If only there were one somewhere. Charles: When you were the senior furniture designer. Thelen: Did you feel that they thought of you that way a little bit? Like they did not appreciate you. Staples: No, I do not think that’s at all true. He just was frustrated about something and I do not think it was what I was doing. His mind was somewhere else on other things. He would have a tendency at lectures, he would start talking about something and he would drift into something else and you could never follow a damn train, you know. It would get to the art and it would do this. Charles did the Elliot lectures at Harvard and as far as we know they have never been published because nobody could follow the transcription or they were not taped well. We know people who were there who said it was beautiful and visual, but they are not sure what he was talking about. Thelen: When you think back on it, I am trying to get a how you experienced rewards and frustrations of working there. Did you feel that they did appreciate your essential role? Did you feel like you had the chance to be all that you could be? If that’s even a relevant category. How did you experience that? Staples: It was always like walking on eggshells. Thelen: Was it? Staples: It was always an issue of whether you were going to get there correctly or not. He was not, did not hand off praise at all. He just worked on something until it was done and then moved to the next one. It was, you know, on the aluminum group, which has a wonderful spreader on supports. I made seven different shapes of that, all from carving the wooden pattern to casting the plaster to getting the port aluminum piece that was the shape, getting it finished and putting it on a chair and then, let us do it again. It was one of these kind of things where you have to go around the clock and you get almost where you started, but now you know that that was a good idea. Thelen: That sounds incredibly frustrating. Staples: It was frustrating. It was certainly frustrating for Herman Miller because Herman Miller paid for all of these options. But Charles’ chairs sold like hotcakes, so they could not complain. He was increasingly less interested in Herman Miller’s problems and when he started getting into this exhibition world. Thelen: I am just trying to picture what it is like when you work with the sense of walking on eggshells. What kind of adjustments a person makes. Staples: You just grin and bear it, turn the other cheek. Charles: It just becomes natural and you just do it. Staples: I guess that’s how I lasted sixteen years; I mean others did not last very long. Charles: It was a unique environment and I would say for both of us we did not know any other environment. Charles hired young; I think he had a tradition of doing that. Staples: And made us old. [Laughter] Staples: But he was great. Thelen: But you were mindful, though he was intervening a lot, that you were in a creative place. Staples: Oh, yes. Charles: An amazing place. Thelen: I am thinking we have been talking for quite a while; do you want to take a break? Or I do not want to cut this off. Of course we will be here for two day and we can add stuff as we go along, do you have some other thoughts about your experiences at Eames that we ought to talk about here? Staples: Well, it was a…Barbara talks about the number of people that came and went at the office. It was like a revolving door to some degree, but there was several of us that stayed on through thick and thin and others came and went. I was certainly hired to do furniture, but then when Charles did not want to do furniture, he wanted to do this stuff, and I did this stuff you know the exhibitions. It was - I do not know how to say it any more than that. You go with the flow. 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