Charles & Ray Eames Dot Pattern

Dot Pattern By Charles & Ray Eames

Created for a 1947 textile competition at the Museum of Modern Art., the Dot Pattern has survived as the most recognized textile design by Ray Eames.

The Dot Pattern textile was not realized in Charles and Ray’s lifetimes. Lucia Eames and Mary Murphy of Maharam resurrected the pattern from Ray’s original drawings and transformed it into a cotton/polyester textile in 1999. Continuously since, it has been made into curtains, pillows, upholstery, tablecloths, purses and more. In addition, American Airlines gifted millions of business class passengers with complimentary Eames Dot Pattern amenity pouches, designed in 2011.

A 1950 article in Portfolio Magazine (Vol. 1 Issue 2) showed a preliminary Dot Pattern drawing adjacent to an image the Eameses took of the wire forms of the DCM, a dining chair made from two molded plywood forms attached to a metal system of legs and chair backing. The shadows of the chair’s metal frame appeared on the white flooring in a configuration similar to the lines of the Dot Pattern. The writer of the Portfolio article noted that the pattern was “clearly related in its linear structure and punctuation to the chair frames,” although there is no written documentation from Charles or Ray that this was the direct inspiration.