One of the largest private archives documenting the mid-20th-century furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames has been withdrawn from an auction scheduled for Thursday because of a lawsuit contesting ownership. The paperwork, which fills more than 100 binders, was to be the top lot at a sale at Wright auction house in Chicago, focused on furniture by the Eameses, known for their mass-produced contoured plywood and fiberglass chairs.
The files were consigned by John and Marilyn Neuhart, design historians in Southern California, who are in their 80s and who had collaborated with the Eameses on exhibitions and books. But on Monday Lucia Eames, the designers’ daughter, filed a lawsuit in an Illinois circuit court asserting that the family owns the material, which includes photos of Eames interiors and showrooms and scripts for corporate-funded movies.
The lot, with an inventory about 60 pages long, was estimated to bring $150,000 to $200,000.
Two weeks before the sale, Lucia Eames’s son Eames Demetrios wrote in an e-mail that his grandparents had shared paperwork stacks with the Neuharts “with no intention that they become the Neuharts’ personal property.” But when asked last Wednesday if he would block the sale, he wrote, “It is our understanding that the auction is generally going forward” and had “no further comment…”
More: Lawsuit Filed Over Eames Archives, Eve M. Kahn, New York Times, April 6th, 2010
