Inspiring Women in History: Eileen Gray
A Woman Who Made Life Not So Gray
Happy late bisexual awareness week! This year, bisexual awareness week took place September 16th to the 23rd. It may not be perfectly on time, but let’s keep the awareness going by showcasing an incredible designer in history, Eileen Gray!
Eileen Gray was a bisexual Irish furniture designer, interior designer, and architect.
Having been born August 9th, 1878 in Brownswood, Ireland and passing on October 31st, 1976 at 98 years old, she lived a long life with many accomplishments! Let’s dive in!
Eileen Gray made her own rules. You know we love a rebel here at Damewood!
She was openly bisexual and one of the first women to be admitted to Slade School of Fine Art in London at 20 years old. Here she studied fine art, drawing, and painting. After completing her studies at Slade, she moved to Paris in 1902 where she continued to learn and experiment. Eileen took what she learned at Slade and applied it to her own design work. This is when Eileen began to experiment with furniture design. She befriended a Japanese lacquer master, Seizo Sugawara, Seizo was the one who introduced her to lacquer and further ignited her passion for furniture design.
During the 1920s, she became one of the leading Lacquer designers in Paris! It was wildly unusual for women to open shops like this at the time. However, Eileen didn’t care! She just used his first name ‘Jean"‘ for her Lacquer shop which was called Galerie Jean desert. The exact reason she decided to use his name for the shop instead of hers is unknown. However, it could’ve been that due to the time period, she might’ve had to use his due to sexism.
She was generationally wealthy and during her 40s with continued success, Eileen started to shift from furniture design to architecture. Using this wealth, she purchased a plot of land. Later it would be known as Villa E 1027! Let’s Talk Villa E 1027, the icon it is.
Photo from Artchitectours.
The Bibendum chair and Adjustable E 1027 Table, picture taken from the Design Collectors website.
Villa E 1027 is one of Eileen Gray’s most notable works. Built in 1926 and opened in 1929, this residence is a modernist villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. Sitting stunningly on the seafront, this is Eileen’s first ever architectural creation. Not only did she work on this architecturally, she designed practical items for this project.
Some of her furniture design work from Villa E 1027 includes:
a tubular steel table originally made for her sister to eat breakfast in bed without crumbs getting everywhere
a tea trolley that included a cork surface to reduce rattling
another trolley to take a gramophone outside.
Many more you can dive into here!
A tale as old as time: men taking credit for women’s work…for many years Eileen’s collaborator/ lover, Jean Badovici, was solely credited for this project despite it being a collaboration. The house’s name is actually code for the lovers! The E stood for Eileen, the 10 stood for Jean, the 2 stood for Badovici, and the 7 stood for Gray.
It’s kind of cute when you think about it…what’s not that cute is when you think about how these two separated shortly after the house was completed.
Then, in a twist of the knife, Badovici allowed Le Corbusier to paint murals on the house. Due to the graphic nudity and Corbusier’s love to paint nude, Gray felt like the murals were just vandalism on her treasured work. Corbusier even said “I admit the mural is not to enhance the wall but on the contrary, means to violently destroy it”.
This house itself has insane lore even beyond that; it was used by nazi’s for target practice, was once rumored to be a drug and orgy den, and one of the owner’s was murdered in the home! Finally, in 1999, official efforts began to save and restore the building after Gray found her recognition!
(Some of) Her Famous Chairs
The Dragon Chair
The Dragon Chair is a wooden upholstered armchair that includes two stylized lacquered dragons on each side. Gray worked on this piece from 1917 to 1919. She lacquered each piece by hand! After doing that she left each piece in her humid bathroom and then went on to polish each piece. The chair went through various owners before being sold to Yves Saint Laurent, a french fashion designer, in 1973. In 2009, this design went up for auction at Christie’s auction house. It sold for 21,905,000 pounds. This established a new record for a piece of decorative art. Since then, it has continued to have various owners. As of now, the owner of the chair is anonymous. However, it has been erroneously reported to be Henry and Marie-Josee Kravis.
Transat Chair
The Transat chair (also known as The Transatlantique chair and The Nonconformist Chair) was created in the mid 1920s. This chair was originally designed for her house that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. This armchair was designed just to fit her needs. It may have been simple looking, however, it was handmade with wooden lacquer. Which using this material at the time could be very complex. The Maharaja of Indore (a city in India) commissioned a piece that sat in the Manik Bagh Palace in 1930. What a flex!
Roquebrune chair
The Roquebrune chair was created in 1932 for Eileen Gray’s second house. There were two versions created. One version using leather and one using blue canvas. The blue canvas version was used for her terrace while the leather version was used for interior use. The main materials used to create this project were tubular steel, leather, and plastic gliders. This design features a lace up back, like a corset!
You can purchase her designs even today at 1st Dibs!
The website will have you in a rabbit hole, I love to source from them! Check out these specific pieces linked below!
Her Later Career
Despite all of the great achievements Eileen made, her work was largely forgotten until the 1970s.
That’s when a British furniture designer, Zeev Aram, wanted to introduce her designs to the world market. They began collaborating to take her designs to a larger scale. Today, Aram Designs holds the worldwide head license for Eileen’s designs and was integral to getting her approval of the production license for world wide sales.
Now, the E 1027 adjustable table can be found in the New York Museum of Modern Art!
The Royal Society of Arts appointed her a royal designer in 1972 at 94 years old!
Being a royal designer is the UK’s highest design achievement and is only awarded to people that have “sustained design excellence, work of aesthetic value and significant benefit to society.”
Eileen Gray reading a book at her home in Paris, France
This blog is an overview of Eileen’s life, there’s so much that I didn’t even touch but if you’re interested in a deeper dive, Eileen’s Website is a great place to start along with these articles from Architecture History and the Royal Academy of Arts!
We have more of this series to come with icons from all over history, be sure to follow along while we keep covering inspiring Women in history!
Cheers!
xx - Eva + Emmy
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