Eames Archives: The Solar Toy and a Visual Language of Sorts

There is a very recognizably “Eames” quality to most of Charles and Ray’s furniture designs-and in their architecture, exhibitions, films, and toys. A visual language of sorts, that allows you to connect the dots along the output of the Eames Office.
The Eames Solar Do-Nothing Machine was a solar-powered toy made as a commission for the Aluminum Company of America, or Alcoa, in 1957. It was a machine with “nothing” as its intended output. All it was meant to do was absorb the sun, and whirl and twirl its numerous parts. When looking beyond this, we can discover its many connections with other Eames projects-both visually and ideologically.
Read more about this solar toy in our latest #EamesArchives blog: eames.link/eames-archives-solar-toy
Eames Archives: An Image as an Idea is a blog series written by Eames Office Photography Archivist, Kelsey Rose Williams, with the intention of sharing rarely-viewed images from the Eames Office archive and the narratives attached to them.

[@andreayaya]

I adore the solar do nothing machine!

[@CraigRoccanova]

The office worked so hard on this! I heard they worked their butts off for 6 months and the day it was filmed, the cloud cover almost kept it from working XD