Arguably the most influential American designers of the postwar period, the Eameses were a model happy couple whose iconic designed objects and design practice were exported globally as symbols of the cheery lifestyle afforded by U.S.-style democratic liberalism. Eamesian happiness, circulating through both images and objects, linked the “goodness” of the American good life to the “goodness” of so-called good design. The new, airy domesticity of good-life modernism was theorized in manifestos for postwar living, such as George Nelson’s and Henry Wright’s Tomorrow’s House: A Complete Guide for the Homebuilder (1945), and promulgated through architectural schools, banking establishments, construction industries, museums, and influential lifestyle magazines like House & Home.

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