20th Century Founder Eileen Gray Of The Modern Design

January 13th, 2010 by Steve Evans

Born Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray on August 1878 in Brownswood close to Enniscorthy, west Ireland, Eileen Gray is a designer, architect and lacquer artist who pioneered the Modern design movement during the 20th century. Like her contemporaries Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Gray’s works for architecture and furnishings were amongst the earliest models of modern design and are considered to be among the best of our time.

The youngest daughter of the well-to-do Scottish-Irish Gray family, Eileen Gray attended the esteemed Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury, London in 1898., but transferred shortly after to the Ecole Colarossi and the Academie Julian in Paris when her father passed away in 1900. Gray in the end returned to London in 1905, where during a visit to the Soho district she became rapt with lacquer-work. She later studied lacquerwork under the tutelage of Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese lacquer artist working for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. After which in 1913, Gray finished her very first exhibit presenting several of her decorative panels all throughout the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.

Eileen Gray begun her career as a lacquer artist before going into furniture design and architecture. The structures she designed were noted for their long and narrow interior spaces and plenty levels for storage and viewing decks, a nod to her liking to ship architecture. In addition, Gray would also frequently design furnishings with the express purpose of placing them inside the inner part 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 accomplishments, 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 featured highly in design magazines. Later after a successful auction of her work was established, Gray died in October 1976 in Rue Bonaparte, France.