In one of her last interviews, given in 1973 in her apartment on Rue Bonaparte in Paris, Eileen Gray responded with skepticism to the interest that her furniture was beginning to arouse among collectors.
“The wheel turns very fast now.
There may be a time when people talk about me, but I'm sure that in a month or so no one will think about it.”
She was very wrong.
Kathleen Eileen Moray (1878, Enniscorthy, Ireland - 1976, Paris), better known by her middle name and a surname that she inherited years later from a baron uncle, knew in her almost 100 years of existence to anticipate the future and predict the formal ruptures that They would prevail decades later.
A self-taught architect, interior designer and designer, Gray was a genius overshadowed and envied by her peers, while she dealt with the rigidity of an era unprepared for her bisexual activism.
She was also one of the most transgressive characters that passed through the design of those years.
For posterity there are anecdotes such as Gray driving through the streets of Paris in a convertible with one of her lovers, the singer Damia, and with her pet, a panther that she carried in the back seat of the vehicle.
After his death his work was forgotten.
But new times heal old wounds and, as happened with other forgotten women such as Ray Eames, Aino Aalto or Bodil Kjær, Gray is recovering her place among the most influential figures of design in the 20th century.
The historian Joseph Rykwert already vindicated his work for Domus
magazine
in 1968: “Now that all the battles for the new architecture have ended, it is difficult to understand how this brilliant and sensitive achievement could have been so neglected,” said the architectural expert from the University of Pennsylvania.
He also praised her “wonderfully humanized, joyful and stimulating” way of interpreting the Modern Movement that her contemporaries Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe championed.
In recent years, interest in Gray and his work has given rise to unquestionable phenomena: his work is on the inspiration boards of many architects and interior designers, his furniture reaches record figures at auction, reissues of his pieces have become objects of desire and some of their constructive and decorative solutions are recovered.
Interior of Villa E1027, designed by Eileen Gray in 1926.Alamy Stock Photo
Tiling as an art form
Over the years, the revaluation of Gray's disruptive spirit has only grown, and he stars in exhibitions and renovation projects with his name as the protagonist.
Eileen Gray continues to be an influencer of color and materials.
“Her way of understanding space and her interior design is very present.
We see simple and refined spaces with color plans and a mix of materials that are reminiscent of her work,” point out Ana Arana and Enrique Ventosa, founders of the architecture and interior design studio Plutarco, based in Madrid.
Now immersed in housing projects and the regeneration of two hotels in Ibiza, the architects cite the Irish woman's work as an indisputable reference today.
“To give an example: the tiled walls that she designed for villa E-1027, beyond the kitchen and bathrooms, are at their peak,” she points out.
Polychrome room (2023), tiled exhibition space, designed by the Plutarco studio, where the legacy of Eileen Gray can be seen.germán sainz
Indirect lights, screens and lattices
One of Gray's first interior design projects, after his arrival in Paris and the opening of his Jean Désert store, was the design of furniture in 1919 for the apartment of the couturier Juliette Lévy, also known as Suzanne Talbot.
She would be his future patron.
In collaboration with interior designer Paul Ruaud, Gray devised an immersive stage filled with theatrical lighting and the use of unexpected materials.
Lighting, for example, came from lamps fashioned from parchment paper and ostrich eggs.
But the final coup was in the hallway.
That passage area forgotten and relegated to the background took center stage due to the screens that covered the walls.
They were lacquered—a technique that Gray had discovered in London, during his student years—and structured in a grid shape with openwork holes.
They were both monumental and delicate pieces that reinterpreted the latticework.
On the left, the famous 'Rocket Lamp' made of parchment paper (© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Katherine Wetzel).
On the right, Juliette Lévy in her living room, design by Eileen Gray (© Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).
Two black lacquer panels from Eileen Gray's Paris apartment, auctioned in November at Sotheby's.Sotheby's
This play of light created from a lattice has been replicated in a multitude of architectural projects, one of the most notable signed by Marcel Wanders.
Creator of the Diamond Screen, a modular screen inspired by the Louis Vuitton
monogram
, he replicated its relief pattern in spectacular proportions for the coverage of the
firm's Miami
boutique .
With this mobile object, Gray also anticipated that post-pandemic concept of fragmenting private spaces without reforming them: the simple use of a black and silver lacquered panel could compartmentalize a home at will.
Something decisive in a present where teleworking and small spaces require sharing private and professional life in few square meters.
Gray's screens continue to be objects of desire: in November, two black lacquer panels, from the designer's own apartment, were auctioned at Sotheby's for $850,000.
Diamond Screen Lattice by Marcel Wanders for Louis Vuitton.Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
The grammar of the new luxury
That Eileen Gray is in fashion is something that is confirmed by the exhibitions dedicated to her work, such as the one dedicated to her by the Pompidou modern art center, the permanent room dedicated to her at the Museum of Decorative Arts and History in Dublin or her prominence in the recent collective
Here we are!
Women in design, 1900-today
at the Disseny Hub Barcelona, produced by Vitra Design Museum.
But its greatest
revival
is not in the exhibition halls, but in many current interiors.
Pioneer of a modernism to be lived and of functionality that is not exempt from beauty, Eileen Gray is today one of the most cited artists in renovation projects.
The Experimental Group hotel chain points to its work, extinguished at the end of World War II, after retiring to the South of France, as a pillar of the new stage of the Regina hotel in Biarritz.
A Belle Époque jewel on top of a hill bathed by the Atlantic Ocean with almost 120 years of history.
The curvilinear lines and dominant primary colors in Eileen Gray's work are a reference in the new era of the Regina Experimental hotel in Biarritz.
For its renovation, interior designer Dorothee Meilichzon wanted to merge the neo-Basque style of the area – specifically, the spectacular villas designed by brothers Louis and Benjamin Gómez – with the imagination of Eileen Gray in the common areas.
“Both the restaurant and the atrium area are inspired by architectural elements that Eileen Gray devised in the late 1920s.
It can be seen in the use of the curve in the wooden furniture, its characteristic stools or the bar counter that is reminiscent of an ocean liner, as does its house in Roquebrune Cap Martin,” explains Dorothee Meilichzon, in charge of the latest Experimental Group projects throughout Europe.
“I chose her work as inspiration because she was one of the first modernist artists, and her house E-1207 conveys that 'sitting on the sea' feeling that I wanted to recreate in the hotel.”
An inexhaustible masterpiece: E-1207
The famous modernist villa that Meilichzon mentions, anchored in the Maritime Alps and bathed by the Mediterranean, was the setting chosen by Louis Vuitton to record its spring 2023 campaign with Zendaya, the brand's new ambassador.
Using a drone and with the actress posing expectantly on one of the railings of the house next to the Capucines bag, a panoramic view of the cliffs on which Gray's majestic work sits is closed.
Built between 1926 and 1929 together with her then lover, the Romanian architect Jean Badovici, E-1207 is a cipher with the names of both.
The E eludes her name, Eileen, while the numbers 10, 2 and 7 are the first letters in alphabetical order of Jean, Badovici and Gray.
At the time it received mixed reviews;
In fact, Le Corbusier went so far as to desecrate the walls of his masterpiece, which was attributed to him for a long time, with several murals.
Now converted into a house museum managed by a non-profit organization that allows visits by appointment, it is an icon of the Modern Movement for its pure and practical lines, after years of vandalism and abandonment.
Panoramic of the villa E-1027, designed by Eileen Gray in Roquebrune Cap Martin, in the south of France.Andia (Andia/Universal Images Group via)
The most expensive chair in the world
The famous 'Fauteuil aux dragons' armchair (1920-1922), the most expensive piece of furniture auctioned in the world.
Jean-Luc LUYSSEN (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Throughout her life, Eileen Gray designed more than 200 furniture references, many modified according to the demands of each client with an exclusive design that today is the stuff of astronomical auctions.
The Dragon chair that she designed in 1917 was her most famous case.
This leather-upholstered seat with two lacquered dragons as armrests in an
Art Deco
style – a style that Gray later repudiated as frivolous – was originally acquired by her patron, Suzanne Talbot.
After passing through the hands of the art dealer Cheska Vallois, it reached those of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé in 1973. The auction house Christie's auctioned the armchair as part of the designer's collection in 2009, reaching the figure of 22 million Dollars.
It is the highest price achieved for a piece of furniture.
A revolutionary interior and the most desired reissues
“A bedroom in which to suffer nightmares or prolong insomnia.”
With these words, an art critic described the
Monte Carlo
room that Eileen Gray designed in 1923 for the 14 Salon of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris.
The space, dominated by a giant mural with abstract shapes in red and white, was guarded by two lacquered lattice screens like shiny bricks.
In the center, a bluish lantern hung from the ceiling, in order to recreate strange swirls in the semi-darkness.
The eccentric 'boudoir' that Gray designed in 1923. @ Archives Galerie Gilles Peyroulet, Paris.
The image, taken by artist Raoul Dufy, shows how the fantasy of this charming
boudoir
in the hands of the Irish architect and designer was far from the simplistic elegance that surrounded the avant-garde of Paris in those days.
A
shock
for the cultural elite of the time that unleashed criticism and passion.
JJP Oud, a member of the De Stijl movement, was one of its defenders.
The Dutch architect was ecstatic with Gray's cabin, as he expressed in a letter.
How could an unknown Irish woman from County Wexford exceed the expectations of the
European
avant-garde ?
That same photo Dufy took from 1923 contains some of Gray's milestone furniture being made on demand today.
Gray's label is also one of the most prolific in the field of reissues, since the German company ClassiCon became the sole licensee of his legacy in the 1990s.
This is the case of the Brick screen, its famous room divider based on fixed and mobile panels that make up the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York.
Its current price is around 50,000 euros.
Prototype of the 'Brick' screen, 1918. Courtesy of Robert and Cheska Vallois, Paris © Arnaud Carpentier.
On the floor, under the Dragons chair, another immortal design: the Blue Marine rug.
Made of pure wool in Gray's own workshop, it was inspired by the sea that bathed his house on the French Riviera, conceived for this villa and also reissued by ClassiCon for less than 3,000 euros.
Other pieces that continue to be reissued are his Bibendum armchair, ironically inspired by the Michelin man for its swollen and spongy leather shape;
or the canoe-shaped Lota sofa, which he designed for his future patron on the Rue de Lota, as well as its famous black lacquered panels.
Currently Eileen Gray's most in-demand piece is the E-1207 table.
But without a doubt, the most in-demand piece today is the E-1207 table.
Recognizable by its pure lines and curves in chrome metal, Gray conceived this adjustable table so that his sister could have breakfast in bed without removing the sheets.
Today it heads the list of the 12 most influential modern furniture of the 20th century, compiled by
Dezeen
magazine , including designs by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and the Eames couple.
Reissues of his most famous armchair, 'Bibendum', in honor of the man of the Michelin drawing.