The Modern Design Founder: The Simple Eileen Gray During the 20th Century
December 19, 2009
Born Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray on August 1878 in Brownswood nearby Enniscorthy, west Ireland, Eileen Gray is a designer, architect and polish artist who founded the Modern design movement during the 20th century. Like her contemporaries Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Gray’s designs for architecture and furnishings were among the earliest models of modern design and are recognized to be among the best of our time.
The youngest daughter of the well-to-do Scottish-Irish Gray clan, Eileen Gray focused the esteemed 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 passed away in 1900. Gray in the end returned to London in 1905, where during a visit to the Soho district she became captivated with lacquer-work. She later studied lacquerwork under the tutelage of Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese lacquer artist working for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Finally in 1913, Gray made her very first exhibit featuring several of her decorative panels all throughout the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.
Eileen Gray started her career as a lacquer artist before branching out into furniture design and architecture. The buildings she made were identified for their long and narrow interior spaces and numerous stages for storage and viewing decks, a nod to her liking to ship architecture. In addition, Gray would also frequently 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.
Regardless of of her achievements, Gray’s career went downhill after World War II when her houses and most of her belongings in France were destroyed by the retreating German Army. Eileen Gray resided in France for the remainder of her life, finally regaining most of her position in the public eye after being recognized highly in design magazines. Later after a successful sale of her work was launched, Gray passed away on October 1976 in Rue Bonaparte, France.
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