During her lifetime, Ray Kaiser Eames received less credit than she has been given posthumously in art and design literature, museum shows, and documentary films.

Ray Eames was born in Sacramento, California, to Alexander and Edna Burr Kaiser and had an older brother named Maurice.

[7] After graduating in 1931, she spent a term at Sacramento Junior College before moving with her widowed mother to New York to be nearer her brother, then a West Point cadet.

In 1937, she became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group and exhibited paintings in its first show at Squibb Gallery April 3–17, 1937, New York City.

[12] Kaiser lived alone in New York City until she left the Hoffman Studio to return home to care for her ailing mother.

Her architect friend, Ben Baldwin, suggested she might first enjoy studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

[citation needed] John Entenza, the owner and editor of Arts & Architecture, recognized the importance of the Eameses' thinking and design practices—he also became a close friend of the couple.

In the meantime, Charles and Ray spent many days and nights on site in the meadow, picnicking, shooting arrows, and socializing with family, friends, and coworkers.

Eventually, they decided not to build the Bridge House, but instead reconfigured the materials to create two separate, glassy, block-like structures, nestled into the property’s hillside.

[citation needed] She worked on graphics for advertising, magazine covers, posters, timelines, game boards, invitations, and business cards.

Ray's early background in fashion design proved useful here, as the splint resembled a clothing pattern with a system of darts to contour the plywood to the shape of a leg.

[21] Ray and Charles worked together to create their most popular furniture: Collaborating with Eero Saarinen, the Eameses applied their knowledge of plywood, gained from their Navy splints, to chair design.

The resulting Lounge Chair Wood (LCW) won the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Designs in Home Furnishings contest and, in 1946, went into production by Herman Miller.

[26] Originally created in 1948 for the Museum of Modern Art’s “International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design,” the Eames Fiberglass Shell Chair was first sold in 1950.

[34] The New York Times wrote in 2015 that “by the mid-1950s, the Eameses had become as indispensable to the American computer company IBM as they were to Herman Miller,” which has continued to produce their furniture.

[37] With their interest in communicating ideas visually, the Eameses also turned their attention to exhibition design, beginning in 1950, for the Chicago Merchandise Mart and the New York Museum of Modern Art, and continuing into the mid-1970s, for IBM.

[38] During the 1960s and early 1970s, the Eameses designed a series of exhibitions for IBM, centered on scientific and mathematical themes, as well as famous individuals within those fields.

If Ray was less passionate about computers than her husband, she shared his belief in their importance and used her talents to make them understandable and acceptable to ordinary people.

The result was a 1.25-acre site divided into several distinct exhibition areas, each covered with an enormous translucent plastic canopy held up by steel "trees."

Ray worked on several unfinished projects (e.g. a German version of the Mathematica exhibition), continued consulting to IBM, published books, gave lectures, accepted awards, and administered the Eames archive and estate.

"[40] On February 23, 2013, a 3,300-square-foot exhibition entitled “Ray Eames: A Century of Modern Design,”[41] opened in the Sacramento, California Museum.

When the Eameses appeared on The Today Show in 1956, for example, the new lounge chair was presented simply as “designed by Charles Eames.” [43] The show's host, Arlene Francis, added that “when there is a very successful man, there is an interesting and able woman behind him.”[43] Francis proceeded to introduce Ray condescendingly, with the line, “This is Mrs. Eames, and she’s going to tell us how she helps Charles.”[43] In general, the media typically attributed the work solely to Charles, sometimes footnoting Ray.

[45] As Kirkham put it in the introduction to the interview transcript, "the interchange of ideas between these two enormously talented individuals is particularly difficult to chart because their personal and design relationship was so close.

[46] Ray has also received posthumous recognition for her personal fashion sense, which the New York Times described as "too maidenly to be echt-bohemian, too saucy to be quaint.