The Modern Design Founder: The Simple Eileen Gray During the 20th Century
Born Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray on August 1878 in Brownswood close to Enniscorthy, west Ireland, Eileen Gray is a designer, architect and polish artist who founded the Modern design movement in the 20th century. Like her contemporaries Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Gray’s designs for architecture and furnishings were amongst the earliest models of modern design and are considered to be among the best of our period.
The youngest child of the well-to-do Scottish-Irish Gray family, Eileen Gray attended the well-regarded Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury, London in 1898., but transferred then after to the Ecole Colarossi and the Academie Julian in Paris when her father died in 1900. Gray in time returned to London in 1905, where during a visit to the Soho district she became captivated with lacquer-creation. She eventually studied lacquerwork under the tutelage of Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese lacquer artist working for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Finally in 1913, Gray finished her very first exhibit featuring several of her attractive panels all throughout the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.
Eileen Gray started her career as a lacquer artist before going into furniture design and architecture. The structures she designed were noted for their extensive and narrow interior spaces and numerous levels for storage and viewing decks, a nod to her liking to ship architecture. In addition, Gray would also often design furnishings with the express reason of placing them inside the interiors of the buildings she designed and decorated. Some remarkable furniture designworks she made include the Bibendum Chair, the Biboquet Table, and the E-1027 Table Lamp.
In spite of her achievements, Gray’s profession went downhill after World War II when her houses and most of her belongings in France were ruined by the retreating German Army. Eileen Gray resided in France for the remainder of her life, eventually regaining most of her position in the public eye after being recognized importantly in design magazines. Later after a victorious auction of her work was established, Gray passed away on October 1976 in Rue Bonaparte, France.
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Window Hardware | Jane | 29 December 2009 |
