Eileen Gray

This article describes interior decorator and designer Eileen Gray. For information on the cyclist and cycling official, see Eileen Gray (sports official) .

Eileen Gray, around 1910

Eileen Gray (born August 9, 1878 in Enniscorthy as Eileen Kathleen Moray Smith , County Wexford , † October 31, 1976 in Paris ) was an Irish interior designer and designer . She is one of the most important designers of the early 20th century. Her table E.1027 is her best-known product design, which has been copied unchanged as a design classic, but has also been plagiarized.

Life

Eileen Gray was born in Ireland on the Brownswood family estate near Enniscorthy, County Wexford, the youngest of five siblings. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1898 to 1902 .

In 1900 she traveled to Paris for the first time to attend classes at the École Colarossi and the Académie Julian between 1902 and 1905 . Two years later she moved to Paris, her apartment at 21 rue Bonaparte remained her home until her death.

Eileen Gray: adjustable table E.1027

She began her design career in 1910 with designs for exclusive lacquer furniture, in which the fading zeitgeist of Art Nouveau and Japonism was visible. Seizo Sougawara , a Japanese lacquer artist , was one of her sources of knowledge about this handicraft in addition to an apprenticeship in the Dean Street furniture workshop of D. Charles in London. But the developing aesthetics of Art Deco - Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann should be mentioned here - influenced her, even if her designs gradually became less opulent, less elitist and thus decidedly more modern. In addition to the individual objects, she also developed interior concepts. In 1913 her work, exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, caught the attention of the fashion designer and art collector Jacques Doucet . She designed several objects for him, such as the Le Destin screen with four wings in 1914 and the Lotus table in 1915 . During the First World War she worked as a truck driver in Paris under the direction of the Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre. In 1915 she worked with Sougawara in London for two years.

On her return to Paris, she received her first order for a complete interior design and designed her well-known block wall screens made of lacquer for Mme Mathieu Lévy's apartment .

Around 1920 she met the Romanian architect and editor of the important architecture magazine L'Architecture Vivante Jean Badovici , in whose circle such important creative people as Fernand Léger , Gerrit Rietveld and Le Corbusier moved. Badovici encouraged her to venture into architectural projects as well. From 1925 on, she built her first house on a coastal plot of land on the French Riviera - the E.1027 . This design exemplifies the style of how economically it interlinks space and usage planning and how the furniture element becomes an essential part of the architecture. This becomes visible in the numerous built-in furniture she designed, which, in harmony with the individual pieces of furniture she designed, allow the house and the furniture to be used in a practical and variable manner. Another characteristic of Eileen Gray's sensitive creative powers is that the house is fully immersed in its surroundings and integrates the themes of “sea” and “coast” into the architecture in a modern way.

In 1922 she entered the art scene by participating in the Union des Artistes Modernes exhibition . This enabled her to set up her own workshop. Parallel to her design work, she opened the Galerie Jean Désert in Paris in May 1922. Here she presented and sold her designs, which included furniture, carpets and, above all, her screens.

Still designing a few buildings, Eileen Gray lived in seclusion in Paris or in her house near Menton near her first house, E.1027 . Her furniture also only sold in small numbers and sporadically, although she repeatedly caused a sensation in specialist circles with magazine articles and invitations to exhibitions. Over the years after the construction of her, internationally much discussed house E.1027 and other designs outside of specialist circles, she gradually fell into oblivion.

It was not until the end of the 20th century that her work was rediscovered and her significant contribution to modern design was recognized. This is reflected, among other things, in the re-editions of their designs and exceptional prices for their vintage objects at design auctions. In 1972 she was named "Royal Designer to Industry" by the Royal Society of Arts in London. In 1987 the Museum of Modern Art in New York added its Adjustable Table E 1027 to its design collection. The rescue of your house E.1027 by the public sector in France, which is now finally taking place, should also be seen in this context. The Center Pompidou in Paris showed her works in a large exhibition in 2013.

Perhaps Eileen Gray's statement, which can be understood as a counter-position to Le Corbusier's coining of the term “living machine” , can be used to characterize her understanding of architecture: “A house is not a machine in which one lives. It is something like a «shell» of the human being - his reaching into the environment, (...), his emanation. ”The same certainly applies to her furniture designs, which, like a situationally stimulated emanation of the user, respond to current needs have it adjusted. One example of this is the Jean table (1929) designed by her, which fits into the smallest of rooms, but can also easily be folded out into a larger dining or work table.

Work: Design

Eileen Gray: lamp

Eileen Gray: adjustable table E-1027 and Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer

Eileen Gray realized a few, nonetheless outstanding architectural projects. The widely published villa in Cap Martin-Roquebrune (E.1027) designed on behalf of her then partner Jean Badovici is legendary . The Villa Tempe a Pailla was built by her in 1932 in Castellar (Alpes-Maritimes) on a hill above the town of Menton. It was her second home on the Cote d'Azur.

Despite an unmistakable, consistently modern architectural style, Eileen Gray's current fame is primarily based on her furniture designs. Some of their most important objects have been re-produced in re-editions since the 1970s - and are often plagiarized. Your table E.1027 is still one of the most copied designs of classic modernism.

Her early designs gradually break away from the influences of Art Nouveau and Japonism that determined the aesthetics of the early 20th century in Europe. This development can be clearly seen in her designs for screens, which dominated the beginning of her career.

At the beginning, synthesizing decorative Art Nouveau and neoclassical tendencies and thus close to Art Déco , she developed her style further by leaving the figurative decor behind in favor of a geometric repertoire of forms. Along with this development, she simplified and functionalized the basic concept of her designs. How much the development towards functionality as a design-determining element defines the aesthetics of Eileen Gray becomes clear when one compares an early screen from 1912 with the block wall screen from 1925: the decorative element now arises logically from the stringent cultivation of the functional. An application is no longer necessary for beauty, rather it is an indirect result of the modern approach to form follows function . Mainly as a result of this step, the artisan of the 19th century became the designer of the 20th century. In principle, Eileen Gray developed this aesthetic in parallel and in exchange with the Bauhaus movement and Le Corbusier . With this, and among others with Bob Oud , she was connected through the European exchange of ideas within the design avant-garde.

Her adjustable table E-1027 is exemplary of her design style : it can be adjusted in height according to the situation, pushed under the chair with the base and easily transported using the handle. The use of modern materials - such as tubular steel and glass here - is also a feature of their designs. What is remarkable is her ability to give her designs additional emblematic clarity through reduction and formal simplicity. The harmony of these features creates a design that, with its practical impetus and functional elegance, develops its very own aura. The creative atmosphere in Paris, where the exclusive and elitist elegance of French Art Déco met the formalistic reduction of democratically-minded constructivism , has found a synthesis in her designs.

Her acquaintance with the avant-garde circle of the Union des Artistes Modernes (Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand , Jean Prouvé , Robert Mallet-Stevens ) made her acquainted with the tendencies of modern design and architecture. The more and more contemporary materials she uses - aluminum sheet, cork, parchment, tubular steel - show the modernity of her design ideal, which no longer saw any relevant added value in the use of exclusive materials (a preference of Art Deco) such as macassar wood, ivory, piano lacquer and ray skin . The Bibendum Chair , also a design for E-1027 , is another example of the new unpretentious but elegant and modern style that Eileen Gray developed.

Gray's furniture designs are now produced under license by the Munich company Classicon.

Work: Architecture

House E.1027

Together with the Romanian architect Jean Badovici , her partner at the time, she built her first residential building E.1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera, a few meters above the rocky shore opposite the Bay of Monaco. The name is a code abbreviation consisting of E for Eileen, 10 for Jean (the tenth letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray. Equipped with an L-shaped floor plan, a flat roof and floor-to-ceiling windows, the result is an exemplary building of international modernism that is both rationally self-contained and one that opens up to its surroundings. Gray also designed the entire equipment and created designs which, with their synthesis of modernity and design elegance and restraint, are still in demand today (side table: Adjustable table E-1027 , armchair: Bibendum ). Following the aesthetic maxim of the overall design, she designed functional built-in furniture that looked restrained like walls or objects, leaving enough space and effect for the other furnishings.

This modern interpretation of the interaction between design, interior design and architecture was also reflected in many other projects of international avant-garde architecture at the time: particularly in the Maison de verre in Paris (completed in 1932). by Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet . Here, too, architecture and interior fittings are inextricably linked: versatile and innovatively designed built-in furniture is, as with the E-1027, also a design component of the house. The exemplary quality of this concept was quickly recognized and was reflected in the architecture magazine L'Architecture Vivante in late 1929 . There Eileen Gray's partner Jean Badovici dedicated an entire issue to her house E-1027 . This edition was re-published in France.

Le Corbusier was impressed by this house and was often a guest, even after Eileen Gray moved out in 1932, which resulted from the end of the relationship with Badovici. With Badovici's approval, he realized large-format, brightly colored murals, which Eileen Gray viewed as an interference with her design and which thus led to a rift and long-standing argument with Le Corbusier. Due to several changes of ownership and unfortunate circumstances, the house became increasingly desolate over the years, which culminated in the late 1990s with vandalism in the unguarded house. In 1999, the French state and the municipality of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin joined forces to protect the architectural monument : it was declared a French National Cultural Monument and incorporated into the public institution Conservatoire du Littoral . Provisional security measures were not supplemented by any further substantial commitment. Comprehensive renovation was only started in 2008. The official plans, which gave the French state, the Alpes-Maritimes department and the Roquebrune-Cap-Martin municipality the authority to carry out the renovation, stipulated that the restoration of the building as well as the interior work should be based on historical preservation criteria and the design of the outdoor facilities Should be completed during 2009. According to one of the companies involved in the renovation, the total cost of saving this incunabula of 20th century architecture was around 600,000 euros.

One of the biggest - and most interesting in terms of the solution - problems of this restoration is not only whether and how the well-documented furniture could be restored (the now priceless originals were auctioned by the owner at the time in 1991, the built-in furniture was largely destroyed), but also for Which solution was chosen with regard to the wall paintings by Le Corbusier, which Eileen Gray vehemently rejected: Unfortunately, no official source of information was created for the interested public to document the facts. Isolated information can be found at the Conservatoire du Littoral and a company involved in the restoration.

Eileen Gray designed very few other buildings: in the early 1930s a villa ( Tempe a Pailla ) very close to Roquebrune, after she had left E.1027 for Badovicis. At the age of 75, she converted an existing house near Saint-Tropez into her holiday home, called Lou Pérou .

Vintage objects: prices in the art trade

Eileen Gray's rare vintage objects have been in increasing demand in the art / design trade and auction business since the 1970s. This applies both to her early designs, which are bound to end Art Nouveau, as well as to her later decidedly more modern objects. The decisive factor for the value - and the increase in value - is that the object is not a posthumous implementation of a design. Rather, the work must come from her hand, i.e. it must have been made by herself or produced under her supervision. One of the reasons why Eileen Gray's designs are so high these days is that many of her designs are often unique or have been produced in very small numbers. For example, there are 12 examples of their brick screens, but all of them are actually unique because they vary in size and design.

A signal of its importance for the art and design trade was given by the prices that were sold at Christie's Collection Yves Saint Laurent et Pierre Bergé in Paris from 23-25. February 2009. Four objects from different creative periods were auctioned and some of them achieved exceptionally high prices. For a decorative sideboard with Art Nouveau appeal - one of her lacquer works - from 1915/1917, a price close to the (very optimistic) lower estimate of 3,985,000 euros was achieved. A somewhat later console from 1920 documents its stylistic development very well: With a simpler design, this lacquered furniture is close to Art Déco and fetched a price of 2,305,000 euros well above the upper estimate. The bidding war for an armchair design from 1917/19 turned out to be very exciting: estimated at 2,000,000 euros upper estimate, the exotic Fauteuil aux Dragons fetched an amount that is the highest price ever achieved for a furniture object of the 20th century. Ultimately, 21,905,000 euros were approved for this design. And from 1925 there was an exceptional modern lamp design ( Satellite ), which fetched a price of 2,977,000 euros well above the upper estimate of 800.00 euros.

A look at past auction results provides an indication of the price development and the increasing appreciation of Eileen Gray's designs. In 1980 the Satellite lamp was sold by Sotheby's in Monaco ( Eileen Gray Collection , 25/05/1980, lot 298) for 18,000 francs (around 3000 euros) - the estimate at the time was 3/4,000 francs. And a screen from 1930/32 - a design for the E-1027 - brought in about 2500 euros there. In 2003, this property fetched USD 107,550 at an estimate of USD 30 / 50,000 in New York (Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, June 11, 2003). Another example of this design was auctioned in Paris (Christie's, March 29, 2011) for 1,353,000 euros.

literature

• Charlotte and Peter Fiell (eds.): Design des 20. Jahrhundert , Taschen, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-8365-4107-7 , pp. 297–299
• Philippe Garner: Eileen Gray - Design and Architecture 1878–1976. 2007, bags.
• AW Maurer : 3 houses by designer Eileen Gray on the Côte d'Azur. Philologus-Verlag, Basel 2007.
• Eileen Gray - invitation to travel , 60 min. Documentary by Jörg Bundschuh, languages ​​German + English, Kick Film GmbH, Munich 2006.
• E. 1027: Maison en bord de mer , Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, in L'architecture Vivante . Reedition Ed. Imbernon, Marseille 2006. ISBN 2-9516396-5-1
• Charlotte Kerner : The nonconformist. The life story of designer and architect Eileen Gray , Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 2002, ISBN 3-407-80873-9 .
• House of Vanities , article on Eileen Gray's E-1027 by Peter Adam, AD - Architectural Digest - 3/2001, Condé Nast Verlag, Munich 2001.
• Eileen Gray , Constant, Caroline, Phaidon 2000, 249 pages.
• Gray, Eileen. Architect / designer. , Peter Adam, Edition Stemmle, Zurich, 1989, 400 pages ISBN 3-7231-0389-8 .
• E. 1027: Maison en bord de mer , Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, in L'architecture Vivante . Re-edition, Da Capo Press, New York 1975.
• Eilee, Gray, architecture for all the senses. , Edited by Caroline Constant and Wilfried Wang, Frankfurt, Deutsches Architektur-Museum / Harvard University School of Design, 1996, 213 pages ISBN 3-8030-0168-4 .
• Christina Threuter: Eileen Gray, Le Corbusier and the phantasmatic rooms of Oda-Liske E.1027 . In: Art and Politics: Yearbook of the Guernica Society . Vol. 4, 2002, pp. 49-62.
• Christina Threuter: An architecture of empathy. Eileen Gray's home E.1027. In: Hanna Katharina Göbel, Sophia Prinz (ed.): The sensuality of the social. Perception and material culture. Bielefeld 2015, pp. 177–194 ISBN 3-8376-2556-7 .
• Wilfried Wang u. a. (Ed.): E.1027. Roquebrune-Cap-Martin 1926-1929 , Tübingen: Wasmuth 2017 (The O'Neil Ford monograph series; 7) ISBN 978-3-8030-0831-2 .

Web links

Commons : Eileen Gray  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Eileen Gray in the catalog of the German National Library
• ClassiCon - Worldwide licensee and sole distributor for Eileen Gray
• “Invitation to a Voyage” - Documentary about Eileen Gray
• Eileen Gray. In: arch INFORM .
• Eileen Gray and the Michelin Man
• biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated July 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ ^{a b} lacquerware , on www.eileen-gray.de, accessed on 22 December of 2009.
3. ↑ eileen-gray.de
4. ↑ Eileen Gray. Center Georges-Pompidou
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Archive link ( Memento of the original dated June 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Jean - ClassiCon DE. Retrieved September 1, 2017 . 
7. ↑ Robert Woitschützke: Renaissance of Eileen Gray. E.1027. In: Rheinische ART, edition 11/2013
8. ↑ eileen-gray.de with photos
9. ↑ eileen-gray.de , directions
10. ↑ Eileen Gray - ClassiCon DE. Retrieved September 1, 2017 . 
11. ↑ Eileen Gray. In: arch INFORM ; Retrieved December 14, 2009.
12. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ [1]
14. ↑ eileen-gray.de , e1027
15. ↑ [2]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
16. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
17. ↑ [3]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
18. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
19. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
20. ↑ ^{a b} Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
21. ↑ http://christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22294#action=refine&intSaleID=22294&sid=d537d67d-b8b4-45e5-85cd-8fa359c8ca62
22. ↑ http://christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22294#action=refine&intSaleID=22294&sid=d634a856-f8cc-429e-8bb3-347204135bc8&selectedids=54363
23. ↑ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5404244&sid=96c22d24-23f4-4f8e-af6d-8c9b9795622d