Celebrate Halloween with the Eames Gauze Study, a hauntingly beautiful look at form, material, and process from design legends Charles and Ray Eames.

To celebrate Halloween here in the U.S., we’re summoning a design experiment that perfectly balances form, material, and mystery: the Gauze Study for Side Shell by Charles and Ray Eames.

Preserved in the Eames Institute collection, this piece feels like the spirit of design itself. Translucent, delicate, and suspended between idea and object, it’s as if a ghostly chair materialized mid-thought, whispering clues about the creative process. Ray and Charles Eames were never ones to design from a distance. They preferred to think through making, prototyping directly with their hands, testing ideas in real time.

They built everything from small mock-ups to full-scale models like this one. Formed from a gauzy textile that stiffened as it dried, the study was a material experiment — an exploration of what shape could emerge when you let the process lead.

By watching what the material could and couldn’t do, the Eameses let design evolve naturally, each discovery informing the next. The result? A chair that seems to hover between states — part idea, part apparition.

Halloween Meets Mid-Century Modern

Look closer and you’ll see it: the gauze draped like a shroud, the skeletal frame beneath, the way shadows cling to every curve. It’s mid-century modern by way of the supernatural, a ghost of innovation made visible. The gauze isn’t just a surface; it’s the residue of an idea, caught in the moment before it solidified.

What We Learn

Material as Medium: The Eameses didn’t force their materials into form they learned from them. The gauze wasn’t decorative; it was instructive.

Process as Presence: Every fold, wrinkle, and tension mark is a record of curiosity. It’s what happens when you let making be a form of thinking.

The Beauty of the In-Between: Like Halloween itself, the Gauze Study celebrates what’s ephemeral, the in-between phase where imagination meets matter.

So as you carve pumpkins or tweak your latest prototype, take a cue from the Eameses: embrace the ghostly, the uncertain, the not-yet-finished.

Happy Halloween from the Abduzeedo design fam and may your ideas take shape in mysterious and beautiful ways!