Charles Eames Cartoon

These cartoons, which Charles made his senior year of high school and first year of college (1924-1925), reveal his sense of humor. One drawing says “The Senior Farewell” and depicts a tie-wearing Yeatman graduate getting booted off a cliff’s edge into the real world. Nervous perspiration flies off his brow, and the only thing to keep him afloat is an already-patched balloon representing his high school education.

A bookplate features a weary and unruly man crouching amongst books, tools, spiders, and stacks of drawings—one of which shows the front steps to Washington University in St. Louis, where Charles was briefly a student. Another cartoon shows a bundled-up man with a hat, coat, and scarf. All around him, it “snows” a plethora of dates, which gather at his feet in a jumble. The caption reads, “A Historian’s Nightmare.”

While these drawings reveal Charles’s playfulness, they also represent his developing artistic skills, which later appear in his Christmas cards to family members, his architectural sketches, his paintings, and more.

1925
This bookplate, drawn in the year Charles entered college, reveals his refined sense of humor.  A weary and unruly man crouches amongst books, his tools of craft, and stacks of drawings—an untidy environment that he shares with spiders and other insects.

1924 – 1925
These cartoons, which Charles made his senior year of high school and first year of college, reveal his sense of humor.

One drawing says “The Senior Farewell” at the top. It shows a tie-wearing Yeatman graduate getting booted off a cliff’s edge into the real world. Nervous perspiration flies off his brow, and the only thing to keep him afloat is an already-patched balloon representing his high school education.

A bookplate features a weary and unruly man crouching amongst books, his tools, spiders, and stacks of drawings—one of which shows the front steps to Washington University in St. Louis, where Charles was briefly a student.

Another cartoon shows a bundled up man with a hat, coat, and scarf. All around him, it “snows” a plethora of dates, which gather at his feet in a jumble. The caption reads, “A Historian’s Nightmare.”

While these drawings reveal Charles’s playfulness, they also represent his developing artistic skills, which later appear in his Christmas cards to family members, his architectural sketches, his paintings, and more.