SARC212

Eileen Gray 1878 - 1976

Tom Inwood, Winston Dewhirst, Lucy Mangin, Saifuddin Shaik

BIOGRAPHY

Eileen Gray

Eileen was born into a wealthy Scottish – Irish family. Eileen was largely overlooked as a serious designer and architect due to both her wealth and her gender. Eileen was never part of a movement and did not have any affiliations with established male architects or designers (which was common at the time).

Eileen was encouraged in her work by her father and they would often travel between Italy and Switzerland, she was also allowed by her father to attend the Slade School of Art in London to study painting. Eileen found painting less and less satisfying over the next stage of her life and extended her career as a lacquer artist, furniture designer and architect.

Eileen’s access to wealth meant that she was a ‘stand alone’ designer in a time when many architects, artists and designers were part of movements. Eileen was given an allowance by her parents and due to her wealth was often not taken seriously – seen more as a hobby.

WORKS

Eileen Gray has created furniture which treat compact space in a creative yet contemporary way.

By regarding the furniture as a solution to compact spaces we can see a merge between simplistic Modernist design and art-deco complexities.

U S E O F S PAC E

Gray’s work on architecture also resembles her furniture – creating spaces that were multi-functional and merged compact space with open living. Eileen opened a gallery space and also contributed work to the Salon d’Automne where she received praise from Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet Stevens.

JUXTIPOSITION OF MATERIALS

Something that Gray often portrayed in her furniture was the juxtiposition of traditional materials with modern form. In the examples here you can see how the texture and material is left to show its true character but the forms themselves create sharp angular structures.

Gray appears to play with the boundaries between traditional and modern furniture and the perception it has on users. Gray also plays with the users ideals of sterality and familiarity of both the Modernist and Art Deco genres. Each piece of furniture reveals its character through imperfections and textures found in the material (wood, leather etc) but maintains a structural feel.

PROGRESSION + MANIFESTO

Eileen Gray’s early furniture strongly characterised Art deco styles, a combination of rich colours, bold geometric shapes and lavish ornaments. Her work on furniture, particularly on screens, initially depicted mythological themes, they visually told stories. As time progressed onto a more modernist error her work became increasingly abstract and cleaned lined. The geometry appreciated within the structure of her furniture, and in architectural work later in her years, was inspired greatly by the de Stijl movement. This was a modernist method of design that accentuated the abstraction of geometric patterns, through simplistic form and colour. Gray aimed for simple lines, even when most of her lacquer work often expressed textural design complexity. This gave her work a unique and playful interpretation of correlating the geometric abstraction with the exuberant finishes of Lacquering. This mix use of elements and design strategies is what crafted her as a significant designer and prolonged her influence on the legacy of furniture design, and essentially design in broad.

Storytelling

Geometric

Lacquering is a lengthy and exacting process, where resin from either of the two trees only found in Asia- the Rhus Verniciflua, the Varnish tree, or the Rhus seccedanea, a variety of sumac- is applied in layers over the wood. The process is worked under a richly humid environment, where impurities are filtered out; surfaces after each coat are pumiced smooth and colour is introduced in the last layers.

MODERN EXAMPLES & APPLICATIONS

“Modern Alchemist” “She was someone who had a gift. She had this incredibly free, very playful way of using materials, of mixing the poorest, the most modest ones, but using them in Masterpieces” – Paris design legend, Andree Putman.

-Transmutation of elements to form a by-product of design that is considered at a state of ‘perfection’.

Works Cited Duncan, Alastair. Art Deco Complete. London: Thames and Hudson, 2009.

Garner, Phillipe. Eileen Gray. London: Taschen, 2006. http://designmuseum.org/design/eileen-gray. Design Museum. n.d.

Johnson, J. Stewart. Eileen Gray - Designer. London: Debretts Peerage, 1979.

Rowlands, Penelope. Eileen Gray. London: Compact Design Portfolios, 2002.