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She soon landed on the sensuous qualities of lacquer as her chosen medium. Dressed in tailor-made men’s suits, with a cropped bob, Gray cut quite a figure – especially when she was driving around Paris in a convertible with one of her lovers, the nightclub singer Damia, and Damia’s pet panther in the back seat. Photograph: Berenice Abbott/National Museum of IrelandĪfter studying painting at the Slade – where she met artists Wyndham Lewis, Kathleen Bruce, Jessie Gavin and Jessica Dismorr – she moved to Paris with them in 1902, quickly falling into the city’s bohemian circles and embracing her bisexuality. Pet panther … Gray in her late 40s in 1926.

Zebra wood side table full#

It reveals how her sensuous, surreal and sometimes mystical work defied categorisation and convention.īorn into an aristocratic family in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, in 1878, the Honourable Eileen Gray (to use her full title, which she disdained) spent her formative years at two addresses: the Georgian manor of Brownswood House, complete with pillared porch and 300 acres of grounds and the other family home in South Kensington, London, a stone’s throw from the Victoria and Albert Museum. She emerges as a creator of strange, haunting interiors, unrealised designs of housing for the homeless and the author of an animal-themed ballet, conceived as “a ballet by beasts for beasts”. She also holds the ignominious title of creating the world’s most expensive chair, once owned by Yves St Laurent and Pierre Bergé, which sold for €22m at auction in 2009.īut the book reveals Gray to be more than a privileged purveyor of rarefied homewares. This table, along with Gray’s charmingly chubby Bibendum chair, has joined the ranks of 20th-century design classics, available at eye-watering prices from high-end boutiques around the world. The world’s most expensive chair … Fauteuil aux Dragons, designed between 19. The house, called E-1027, is rarely referred to without a mention of Le Corbusier, given that he graffitied its walls, built his own little cabin nearby, and died of a heart attack in the sea below it. These days, Gray is most closely associated with two works: an adjustable circular side table made of tubular steel and glass, and a modernist villa on the Côte d’Azur. The current exhibition expands on a show that began at the Pompidou in Paris in 2013, and Gray makes a similarly worthy subject.

Previous exhibitions have shone a spotlight on Finnish pioneers Aino Marsio-Aalto, who was married to fellow architect Alvar Aalto and Armi Ratia, founder of textile company Marimekko. “Eileen Gray remains fundamentally underestimated or misunderstood by most critics and historians,” says Nina Stritzler-Levine, director of the gallery, which has a history of showcasing under-recognised figures.

Photograph: Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs ‘A chamber for the daughter of Dr Caligari’ … Boudoir de Monte Carlo. Like the book, these paint a complex picture of Gray as a multifaceted creator. When it reopens, visitors will be treated to a collection of 200 objects, including never-before-exhibited furniture, lacquer works, architectural drawings and ephemera. Her curious design is reproduced in a substantial new book from Yale University Press, published this month to accompany an exhibition on Gray at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York – which has now, like every other venue, been forced to close its doors. You might think of 1920s Paris as being at the cutting edge of modern style, but it took the bedroom fantasy of an Irishwoman from County Wexford to catch the eye of the European avant garde. “I saw until now very few good modern interiors.” In a PS, he added: “Do you have any modern ‘movement’ in your country?” “I am highly interested and should like to see any more of your works,” he wrote. Despite all the abuse, Gray received an admiring postcard from JJP Oud, the leading architect of the Dutch De Stijl movement, who saw her installation pictured in a journal. “A chamber for the daughter of Dr Caligari in all its horrors,” concluded another reviewer. It was flanked by two screens made of glossy white bricks, while a blue lantern dangled above a carpet swirling with further abstract squiggles. Her zebra-wood divan stood before wall panels lacquered with abstract red and white shapes. The Irish designer’s daring Boudoir for Monte Carlo was a shock to French tastes. ‘A room fit only for nightmares and insomnia.” This was the response of one critic to Eileen Gray’s radical scheme for a bedroom in 1923, installed at the 14th Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris.