ASK + ANSWER
Questions and Replies About Today’s Trends, Talk
ASK: What does a past president of The Henry Ford know about working with Charles and Ray Eames? Harold K. Skramstad Jr., former president of The Henry Ford (1980-96), answers questions asked by The Henry Ford’s chief curator and senior director of historical resources, Marc Greuther. ASK: Do you remember how and when the Eameses first registered on your radar? ANSWER: It was through Bob Staples and Barbara Charles. When I was chief of exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Barbara did a special exhibit on toys. Through Barbara, I got to know [her husband] Bob and, through conversation, got interested in the fact that they had both cut their teeth at the Eames Office. And that’s when we talked about Mathematica. That’s when we talked a lot about [Charles Eames’] impact on film and exhibition design. Ben Lawless and Karen Loveland made a film called Celebrating a Century. In this movie, one of the things that Ben Lawless tried to do was to utilize as actors and actresses all the interesting people at the Smithsonian. Secretary Dillon Ripley had a cameo part of about 10 seconds as an ice cream machine salesman. Charles [Eames] was pressed into service as the commissioner of patents, and I was pressed into service as his assistant. We appear in the film for a total of about four seconds, but both Charles and I thought it should have been about 10 minutes. So we both sort of had our little cameo acting careers as a point of mutual conversation, and then we continued that, and the more intense involvement came [when I was] acting as an exhibit consultant for The World of Franklin and Jefferson. ASK: You obviously were out in the Eames Office in Venice, California. Anything you could convey about your experience there? What was it like to visit for the first time? ANSWER: It was quite a heady experience, just in terms of the way the Office worked. It was so funny because it operated at two ends of the continuum. There was this intense sort of teamwork and collaboration and push. At the same time, Charles and Ray called the shots, in terms of decisions. ILLUSTRATION BY MELISSA MCFEETERS
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JUNE-DECEMBER 2018