Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was a pioneering Irish architect and furniture designer, known for her innovative modernist approach. Born in Enniscorthy, Ireland, she spent much of her career in France. Gray's work fused functionality with elegance, emphasizing clean lines and geometric shapes. She gained recognition for her iconic designs, her most famous work is the house known as E-1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.
Her creations were co-opted by male spearheads of the modernist movement, Jean Badovici, and later the master himself LeCorbusier. Despite facing challenges as a woman in this male-dominated field, Gray's contributions to modern design endure, influencing generations of architects and designers with her timeless creations.
Recognition
Renewed interest in Gray's work began in 1967 when historian Joseph Rykwert published an essay about her in the Italian design magazine Domus. At a Paris auction of 1972, Yves Saint Laurent bought a four panelled screen ‘Le Destin’ and revived interest in Gray's career. The first retrospective exhibition of her work, titled Eileen Gray: Pioneer of Design, was held in London in 1972. A Dublin exhibition followed the next year. At the Dublin exhibit, the 95-year-old Gray was given an honorary fellowship by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.
In 1973 Gray signed a contract to reproduce the Bibendum chair and many of her pieces for the first time, with Aram Designs Ltd, London. They remain in production.
In February 2009, Gray's "Dragons" armchair made by her between 1917 and 1919 (acquired by her early patron Suzanne Talbot and later part of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection) was sold at auction in Paris for €21.9 million (US$28.3 million), setting an auction record for 20th-century decorative art.
Eileen Gray (born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith; 9 August 1878 – 31 October 1976) was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland in 1878, Gray spent her childhood in London and was among the first women to be admitted to the Slade, where she took up painting in 1898 before undergoing an apprenticeship in a London lacquer workshop. In 1922 she opened her own gallery, Jean Désert, in Rue du Fauborg Saint Honoré as an outlet for her designs. Gray designed the facade of the shop herself. Clients included James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Elsa Schiaparelli.
During the 1920s and 1930s she became one of the leading exponents of the revolutionary new theories of design and construction. The furniture was used in Eileen Gray's own interiors, the most celebrated of which was that completed in 1922 for the famous modiste, Madame Mathieu-Lévy (better known as Suzanne Talbot). Her interior design schemes of the period seem both modern and stylish, but were not particularly well received at the time.
The Irish designer’s daring Boudoir for Monte Carlo was a shock to French tastes. “A chamber for the daughter of Dr Caligari in all its horrors,” concluded one reviewer.
She caught the attention of and worked with many of the outstanding figures of the modern movement, including Le Corbusier and J.J.P Oud. Well to the fore of the group she exhibited chrome, steel tube and glass furniture in 1925 - the same year as Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer and well before Le Corbusier.
By 1921, Gray was romantically involved with Romanian architect and writer Jean Badovici who was 15 years her junior. He encouraged her growing interest in architecture. From 1922 Gray created an informal architectural apprenticeship for herself as she never received any formal training as an architect. She studied theoretical and technical books, took drafting lessons, and informally visited building sites. She also travelled with Badovici to study key buildings and learned by reworking architectural designs.
Gray brought her theories to fruition in the construction of a house set nestled on the banks of Cape Martin, France. The house was called E-1027, a code for the lovers' names; the E standing for Eileen, the 10 for J, meaning Jean, the 2 for B standing for Badovici and the 7 for G standing for Gray. E-1027 is routinely described as a modernist masterpiece.
E-1027 is a white cuboid built on rocky land on raised on pillars. According to Frances Stonor Saunders, E-1027 was formulated on Le Corbusier's "Five Points of the New Architecture" because it is an open plan house which stands on pillars with horizontal windows, an open facade and a roof accessible by staircase. However, Gray was critical of the avant-garde movement's focus on the exterior of buildings, writing "The interior plan should not be the incidental result of the facade; it should lead to a complete harmonious, and logical life." According to architecture critic Rowan Moore, E-1027 "grows from furniture into a building."
When E-1027 was finished, Badovici devoted an edition of his magazine to it and announced himself as its joint architect. This claim was disproven by Jennifer Goff, a curator at the National Museum of Ireland. According to Goff's research all extant plans of the house were in Gray's hand alone and “Badovici’s role was firstly client and secondly consultant architect.” In her six-year collaboration with Badovici, Gray was able to create 9 buildings and renovations, 4 of which were credited to Badovici.
By this point, Gray was fascinated by lightweight, functional, multi-purpose furniture which she called "camping style". She created a tea trolley with a cork surface, to reduce the rattling of cups, and positioned mirrors so a visitor could see the back of their head. At the entrance of E-1027 Gray created a celluloid niche for hats with net shelves to allow a clear view without the risk of dust settling.
Le Corbusier often stayed at E-1027 and although he admired it, he was clearly outraged that a woman could have made such an impressive building in a style he thought was his own. During a visit in 1938, he assaulted the house with a series of garish cubist murals, executed in the nude. “I admit the mural is not to enhance the wall,” he later confessed, “but on the contrary, a means to violently destroy [it].” It was later called an “act of naked phallocracy” by a man asserting “his dominion, like a urinating dog, over the territory”.
The house and murals were used as target practice by soldiers during the Second World War and the living room hosted a gruesome murder in 1996. Le Corbusier’s obsession meanwhile continued, building a retreat for himself nearby, and he drowned in the sea below E-1027 in 1965.
Perhaps it was from the shock of his brazen attack, or her own aversion to the spotlight, but – apart from a house for herself near Castellar, a studio apartment in Paris for Badovici and a final renovation project in St Tropez – Gray never built again. Instead, she spent the 1930s and 40s designing unrealised hypothetical projects, mostly public, from workers’ housing to a vacation complex and a social and cultural centre, all driven by a desire to extend the privileged domain of architecture to the many.
Eileen Gray died on Halloween 1976. She is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but because her family omitted to pay the licence fee her grave is not identifiable.