Eileen Gray

Abstract

Eileen Gray (b. 1878–d. 1976), is an Angle-Irish architect and designer of furniture, carpets, and textiles who became known in avant-garde artistic circles in Paris during the 1910s for adapting traditional Japanese lacquer techniques to her contemporary furniture designs. She was born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland. The family name was changed to Gray in 1895, when her mother inherited the title of Baroness Gray, and her father adopted the name Smith-Gray. Gray was studying painting at the Slade School of Fine Arts in 1901 when she began to experiment with oriental lacquer techniques in the London workshop of Dean Charles. The following year she moved to Paris to study drawing at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian. After Gray purchased her apartment in the rue Bonaparte in 1907, she began to collaborate with the Japanese lacquer artisan Seizo Sugawara (b. 1884–d. 1937). This culminated in the establishment of two venues that formed the basis for Gray’s decorative arts production: her lacquer workshop in the rue Guénégaud with Sugawara and her weaving workshop in the rue Visconti with Evelyn Wyld (b. 1882–d. 1973), both in 1910. During the early 1920s Gray began to practice architecture in collaboration with the Romanian architect Jean Badovici (b. 1893–d. 1956), and a decade later she began working independently. A graduate of the École spéciale d’architecture in Paris, Badovici was editor of the avant-garde journal L’Architecture Vivante (1923–1933). Their collaboration may have begun in 1922, when Gray opened a shop in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, which she named Jean Désert, to display her furniture, fabrics, and carpets. Sketches in Gray’s hand indicate her ideas for the design, while Badovici was most likely responsible for the extant architectural drawing. Although the precise nature of their collaboration cannot be determined, Gray played a major role in several further undertakings, including the house E1027 in Roquebrune-Cap Martin (1926–1929), which she created for and with Badovici and for which she is best known. Sketches in Gray’s archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for Badovici’s projects in Vézelay—the Renaudin house (1926–1931), the Badovici house (1927–1931), and artists’ housing (1927–1932)—provide evidence of her possible participation in these endeavors as well. Gray was independently responsible for Badovici’s studio apartment in the rue Chateaubriand in Paris (1930–1931) and two houses for herself in the south of France: Tempe a Pailla near Castellar (1931–1935) and Lou Pérou outside Saint Tropez (1954–1961). Throughout her life Gray continued to develop furniture designs and architectural proposals—some for private clients and others as hypothetical exercises, including most notably a Vacation Center (1936–1937) and a Cultural and Leisure Center (1947–1947).