Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray, born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith on August 9, 1878 in Enniscorthy in the south of Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and died on October 31, 1976 in Paris, is a designer and Irish architect. She is best known for incorporating luxurious lacquered finishes on Art Deco aesthetic furniture and then evolved into International Style tubular steel frame furniture in the 1920s. In the architectural field, she is famous for creating the Villa E-1027 with Jean Badovici, free interpretation of modernist architecture. After having been largely forgotten by the architectural body for many years, it experienced a resurgence in popularity at the end of its life. Today, it is part of the “Pantheon” of architects and designers who have left their mark on this discipline. This is evidenced by the posthumous exhibitions and the historical monument classifications of some of his works. Biography Childhood and education Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith was born on August 9, 1878 in Enniscorthy, now in the Republic of Ireland. Her parents are Eveleen Pounden and James Maclaren Smith. In 1893, the family took the name Gray after her mother inherited a title of Peerage of Scotland2 (she became Eveleen Smith-Gray, 19th Lady Gray). In 1900, she discovered Paris on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition held in the French capital. She began studying painting at the Slade School of Fine Art (art section of University College London) in 19012 where she met Kathleen Scott. In 1902, she arrived in Paris to take courses at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi. Two years later, Gray returned to London to continue his training in lacquer techniques and resumed classes at Slade School. She settled permanently in Paris in 1907 and left painting to study lacquering under the direction of the lacquer craftsman Seizo Sugawara. She bought an apartment in a private mansion in rue Bonaparte, which she would keep throughout her life. In 1908-1909, Gray learned to dye and weave woolen threads with his friend Evelyn Wyld in the foothills of the Atlas. In 1910, she opened two workshops, one dedicated to lacquer, 11, rue Guénégaud, in which the cabinet maker Kichizo Inagaki also collaborated, and the other in carpet weaving, 17-19, rue Visconti. Her beginnings in art Galerie Jean Désert, Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Paris In 1913, she presented her first exhibition, featuring decorative panels, at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs. She combines lacquers and rare woods, geometric abstractions and Japanese-inspired patterns in her work. This attracts the attention of couturier Jacques Doucet, art lover and collector. He orders some works from him, including the “Destiny” screen and the “Lotus” table, which will be the only signed and dated creations, as well as the “Table aux chars” and the “Table au bilboquet”. In London, after the start of the First World War, Gray had to rely on the financial support of his family. From 1919 to 1924, Gray was responsible for decorating the apartment of Suzanne Talbot on rue de Lota in Paris, a fashion celebrity whose elegance was celebrated by The New York Times in an illustrated account of March 5, 1914. It is for this project that she produced the "Armchair Aux Dragons" and a lacquered wood lounge chair that she baptized "Pirogue", with lines with African influences popular in the 1920s4, or its screens in bricks and the more Japanese-influenced “Lota Sofa”. Photographed by Baron de Meyer from 1922, his interior design aroused an avalanche of praise in the press. Suzanne Talbot's apartment, now Madame Mathieu Lévy, was considered to be one of the most exceptional examples of decoration from the early 1920s. Eileen Gray had spent five years perfecting the decor6. Gray opened the Galerie Jean Désert in 1922 at no.217, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré with the help of Jean Badovici, Romanian architect and critic, whom she had met the previous year3. The couple will maintain a professional and intimate relationship. This gallery is the opportunity for Gray to promote and market his works “lacquer screens, wooden furniture, wall hangings, lamps, sofas, mirrors, rugs” according to the gallery's advertising. The gallery itself attracts the attention of the creative world; Badovici's influence is felt there. The facade made of steel and glass imagined by the Romanian architect, in the tradition of René Herbst, contrasts strongly with the stone facade of the building8. Although it is not a financial success, the gallery seduces the chic clientele: we can quote the viscountess Marie-Laure de Noailles, the director René Clair, the writer James Joyce, Damia, Romaine Brooks, Loïe Fuller or again the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Gray then obtains orders for which she collaborates with Sugawara as well as with the weaver Evelyn Wyld. In 1923, she designed the “Boudoir de Monte-Carlo” for the 14th Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris, where a “Pirogue” -type bed and “Afro-Cubist” bedside and floor lamps in ivory, parchment and lacquered wood9, 10, deemed extravagant, this time focus the criticism. On the other hand, this project, which also presented its carpets and brick screens, attracted the attention of the De Stijl movement, a group whose theories and achievements would later inspire it. Towards modernism The turning point She was thus noticed in 1923 by Sybold van Ravesteyn and JJP Oud of the De Stijl movement, whose exhibition she visited in the same year at the Galerie de l'Effort Moderne in Paris. Admiring the designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld, to whom she pays homage with her “Table De Stijl” from 1924 and whose Schröder13 house she visited in 1925, following the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts where the Pavilion of The New Spirit14, it then reacts by renouncing the “monstrosities of Art Deco” and renounces its lamps and lacquered wood to capture these new trends. Also inspired by recent works in tubular steel by Marcel Breuer, such as his “Wassily chair” from 1925, she creates furniture focused on functionality. Already in 1925-1926 with her prototype of "Adjustable table" she began to use the metal tube for furniture, first lacquered, then nickel or chrome from 1927, after having experimented with it on lamps. With these new pieces of furniture, also symbolized by her round Bibendum armchair, made around 1930, which was then purchased by Suzanne Talbot for her new Parisian apartment on Boulevard Suchet, fitted out in 1933 under the direction of architect Paul Ruaud, she began her modernist turn. . Along with Marcel Breuer, René Herbst, Charlotte Perriand and Gerrit Rietveld, she is one of the forerunners of tubular steel frame furniture18. Persuaded by Jean Badovici, she then moved towards architecture from 1924. She learned this discipline late with the help of Badovici, who wanted to build on the Côte d'Azur, and a young architect named Adrienne Gorska, who teaches him the basics of architecture and its practice. The same year, “Maison avec petite fabrique”, a wood that hesitates between sculpture and model, perhaps expresses its first way of approaching architecture. In 1926, his “House for an engineer” project was still part of his simply projected work. It was in Cap Martin, in Roquebrune, that she chose and bought a piece of land in 1926 in the name and on behalf of Badovici, and that they began to work on Villa E-1027 from models and plans. , whose sketches were made with Badovici in 1926, then finalized by Gray in 1927 in conjunction with the interior layout. The name of the house20 is a code for Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici: E for Eileen, 10 for the J of Jean, 2 for the B of Badovici, 7 for the G of Gray21. The E-1027 combines openness and compactness. It forms an L, the roof is flat, with bay windows lengthwise, pilings on the ground floor and a helical staircase for the guest room. Gray, who collaborates on the structure of the house with Badovici, who notably patents the prototype of the sliding windows, also creates all the furniture, with in particular the circular "Adjustable Table" in E-1027 glass and the "Transat" armchairs and "Non-Conformist". At the same time, Le Corbusier, who has already built around ten modern-style “white villas” for private clients, takes part in the first theoretical reflections and experiments of the Modern Movement applied this time to collective housing, by building two pavilions in the experimental city. of the Weissenhof, designed in 1926 and built in 1927 near Stuttgart under the aegis of the Deutscher Werkbund, after having created the Cité Frugès from 1924. While on this occasion he published a brochure exposing the basis of his work, summarized by the “five points of modern architecture”, as shown again by the exterior design of these pavilions, one of them, which Eileen Gray visited in 1927 during this event, is also fitted out in a particularly minimalist manner. on the collective model of a railway car, with integrated lockers, served by a narrow corridor, which attracts criticism from the media. From 1928, Le Corbusier then set out to design more intimate arrangements and furnishings, which he applied to the individual private housing of the La Roche and Church villas (destroyed), which he had already built from 1923 to 192722. He requested the collaboration of Charlotte Perriand, whose Parisian apartment had been refurbished with this in mind in 192723. But these works were not exhibited to the public until the Salon d'Automne in 1929. At the same time, in the special autumn-winter 1929 issue of Living Architecture, villa E1027, which has just been completed, is also published by Badovici, in the form of a dialogue with Gray, which furthermore makes precise dating difficult. of the manufacture of its furniture between 1926 and 1929, in this crucial period of the appearance of so-called modern furniture. With the villa E-1027, the couple of architects Gray and Badovici, while taking up externally the five points of modern architecture set out in 1927 by Le Corbusier, begins a critique of the first reflections proposed in parallel by the latter for the interior design of a standardized collective modern habitat. This criticism is introduced in particular by the idea that the internal layout must remain intimate and is not only the result of the external structure. The villa will also be presented in 1930 in the very first issue of the review L'Architecture moderne24, in which their friend Le Corbusier took part, who however appreciated its originality. Villa E.1027, is a mature work, it is the first architectural construction of Eileen Gray. Active until the end of her life, she established a link between the older generation of artists who were part of the pioneering era of modernity and the generation of the 1980s. Le Corbusier, who then regularly frequented Gray and Badovici in the the summer residence of the latter, painted there in 1938 nine murals, encouraged by the Romanian critic, after having already decorated in 1936 one of his houses in Vezelay with the painter Fernand Léger. However, these become a point of contention between Gray and Le Corbusier, the Irish artist considering that these frescoes do not fit into his architectural approachN 3,25. But Le Corbusier finally convinced Badovici to keep them. After Badovici's death in 1956, the villa was auctioned off to a friend of Le Corbusier, who wanted to ensure its preservation, including frescoes. After a second change of owner in 1974, the house was emptied by the latter of its furniture, sold at auction in 1992, and abandoned following his assassination in 1996. The villa, classified and acquired in 2000 by the Conservatoire du littoral, was rehabilitated26 and then opened to the public in 2015. In 1929, Eileen Gray was a founding member of the movement of interior decorators and architects, the Union of modern artists. In 1932 she started a new house called "Villa Tempe a païa" located on the road from Castellar to Menton27. The name of the house, coming from the Provençal saying "with time and straw, the medlars ripenN 4", is directly linked to the evolution of Gray's work and life. Indeed, this architectural project is his most personal. Jean Badovici is not collaborating on this project. She continues her reinterpretation of the five points of modern architecture set out by Le Corbusier. It is, moreover, a place synonymous with rest and solitude. The land already has tank buildings that it transforms for two of them into a garage and guest room, the third retaining its function as a water reservoir. Above this, she creates living spaces where the limit between private space and common space is clearly defined28. Towards social architecture The 1930s were a turning point for French society. The rise in unemployment followed by access to paid vacation pushes architects to rethink social and cultural facilities. Thus, Eileen Gray, who has a political sensibility of the left is one of the forerunners in the field, and makes social housing issues one of the characteristics of her work. The first project in which it incorporated this social dimension was called “Camping tent” in 1930, where it incorporated a design resolutely turned towards mass leisure. The same year, she imagined a concept of housing called "minimum house" where she developed the idea of a detached house with removable frames that vary according to the topography of the place32. The theme of the prefabricated single-family house will occasionally be found in Gray's work, as in 1936 with the “ellipse house”. Exploring the impact of paid vacation on people's social life, she imagines a vacation and leisure center in 1936-1937. A complete project, it integrates administrative services, parking, different types of accommodation and equipment related to leisure and activities33. This project is presented at the International Exhibition “Arts and Techniques in Modern Life” in 1937 in the “Pavillon des temps nouvelles” of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) alongside Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier34. Oblivion and rebirth Shortly before the opening of the exhibition, she began a long period of seclusion. In 1940, during the Second World War, Menton was annexed by the Italian army and the French coasts were closed to foreigners, it then found refuge in the Vaucluse at Lourmarin then Cavaillon. During this period, many of his works which remained in Menton were looted35. After the war, it is largely forgotten by the architectural body. However, she continued her research on social town planning with the project of a "cultural and social center" from 1946 to 1947. In 1954 Gray began work on her new house, called "Lou Pérou", near Saint-Tropez which will be his last project. On uninhabited land bought in 1939, where a farmhouse throne, she rehabilitates the place in the spirit initiated with Tempe a Pailla, that is to say a place of refuge. His projects were published until 1959, at the age of 81, with the presentation of his 1940s Cultural and Social Center in L'Architecture moderne. In 1968, a flattering article by Joseph Rykwert, published in the unexpectedly successful Domus magazine, was enough to put the E-1027 table and the Bibendum armchair back into production. In 1972, the auction of the furniture of the great couturier and collector Jacques Doucet contributed to the rediscovery of Gray's work. In 1973, several retrospective exhibitions on the work of Eileen Gray were organized in particular by the Royal Institute of British Architects or the Architectural League of New York37. On October 31, 1976, Eileen Gray died in her apartment rue Bonaparte in Paris at the age of 98. The architect and author, Michel Raynaud, said of her: “Four years before her death, Eileen Gray became famous. A film about the life of Eileen Gray, directed by Mary McGuckian, was released in 2015, The Price of Desire.