Charles and Ray Eames may have been the most famous Midcentury Modern design pair in the Americas, but they were not the only professional couple who contributed to its development. Take Ernest and Esther Born, both from the San Francisco Bay Area. The two played an influential role at RECORD and other publications, as Nicholas Olsberg points out in Architects and Artists: The Work of Ernest and Esther Born (2015), which explores their graphic design, photography, exhibition work, typography, architecture, and planning. Yet while this beautifully produced and well-researched book does much to bring the Borns out of obscurity, it doesn’t quite explain why they’ve remained there for so long.

Ernest studied with (and later worked for) John Galen Howard, who, steeped in the Beaux Arts, had founded the architecture program at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1926, Esther also finished her architecture and engineering degree at the university. Although Ernest remained rooted in traditional design, he and Esther, who became a photographer, spent much of their careers spreading the word about Modernism.