Classic: The Eames Hang-It-All

What does the Los Angeles County Museum of Art do when they need a vintage Eames Hang it All for their California Design: Living in A Modern Way exhibition? Head straight to Daniel Ostroff, editor of EamesDesigns.com, Hollywood producer and design scholar, who sources not only a vintage piece but finds it in its original box. LACMA’s request didn’t come out of the blue - in the past year San Francisco’s MOMA, Yale and the Indianapolis Museum of Art have consulted with Ostroff for design scholarship.

“When LACMA announced that they were doing a California design exhibition which overlapped with my area of focus in studying applied art I looked for ways to assist the show’s curators – my friends Wendy Kaplan, Bobbye Tigerman and Bill Stern,” says Ostroff. “With regard to Eames designs I appreciated how selective they were. They had already sourced an Eames surfboard coffee table from Joel and Margaret Chen who have been generous supporters and donors to LACMA at a very high level.”

The Chen’s Collecting Eames show which we wrote about here on Lifework is another Pacific Standard Time exhibition – this time devoted entirely to Ray and Charles Eames’ extraordinary body of work. It was the Chen’s who had the Hang It All in their extensive collection. “Connecting Bobbye and Wendy and Bill with Joel Chen was easy – we all know one another.”

Chen let the LACMA curators choose and they picked the one in the original box from the first year of production. “It is the only precisely dated example because it comes with its original box postmarked first year of production,” says Ostroff. “Plus the Eames Office designed the box and label. This is “new old stock” as the original buyer never used it.”

Photo credit: Box images by Grant Taylor

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