Eileen Gray
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Eileen Gray (August 9, 1878 – October 31, 1976) was an Irish lacquer artist, furniture designer, and architect now well-known for incorporating luxurious lacquer work into the stark International Style aesthetic.
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[edit] Early life
She first studied painting at London's Slade School of Art. She eventually left painting to study lacquer under the guidance of lacquer craftsman, Sugawara.
In 1913, she held her first exhibition, showing some decorative panels at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs. She combined lacquer and rare woods, geometric abstraction and Japanese-inspired motifs into her work. It attracted the attention of Jacques Doucet, an art connoisseur and collector. He commissioned a few pieces – her only signed and dated creations.
Her work went mostly unnoticed. In London after the start of World War I, Gray needed to rely on her family's financial support. Near the end of the war, Gray was commissioned to decorate an apartment on Rue de Lota in Paris. Her interior designs generated a great deal of praise in the press. She opened the Jean Desert Gallery in 1922.
[edit] Increased Notoriety
Shortly thereafter, persuaded by Le Corbusier and Jean Badovici among others, she turned her interests to architecture. In 1924 Gray and Badovici began work on the house E-1027 in Roquebrune, Cap Martin in southern France (near Monaco). The codename stands for the names of the couple: E for Eileen, 10 for Jean (the tenth letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray. L-shaped and flat-roofed with floor-to-ceiling windows and a spiral stairway to the guest room, E-1027 was both open and compact. Gray designed the furniture as well as collaborated with Badovici on its structure. Her circular glass E-1027 table and rotund Bibendum armchair were inspired by the recent tubular steel experiments of Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus (who had been inspired, in turn, by Mart Stam). The house is now in poor repair [1].
In 1968, a complimentary magazine article quickly grew into an unexpected hit, and the Bibendum chair and E-1027 table went back into production, soon to become modern furniture classics. Following the purchase of her archive in 2002, the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, Dublin opened a permanent exhibition of her work. On the 8th November 1972, The Doucet sale added to the interest which continues to this day in the 'antiques' of the twentieth century. Grays 'Le Destin' screen was featured in the sale and went for a staggering figure of $36,000. Collectors entered the chase, and Yves Saint Laurent's interest completed the mythification of her image.
[edit] Personal life
Gray was bisexual. She mixed in the lesbian circles of the time, to include associations with Romaine Brooks, Gabrielle Bloch and her lover Loie Fuller, the singer Damia, and Natalie Barney [2]. Gray's intermittent relationship between Damia (or Marie-Louise Damien) ended in 1938, after which they never saw each other again, although both lived into their nineties in the same city. Gray also, for some time had an intermittent relationship with Jean Badovici, the Romanian architect and writer [3]. He had written about her design work in 1924 and encouraged her interest in architecture. Their romantic involvement ended in 1932 [4].
