In Eileen Gray, Her Life and Work, promulgated by Thames & Hudson the author, Peter Adam, had the arduous task of gaining insight in to the life and impulse of this celebrated designer. First published in 1987 this mulling things over and definitive biography of Eileen Gray is now revised impressive updated with extra illustrations.
This is an endlessly fascinating book trouble a woman universally revered in the fields of architectural presentday design yet almost unknown during her lifetime. She was socially awkward, curmudgeonly and rude, left minimal records of her out of a job, led a secretive personal life and burnt all her letters.
Her career was not prolific: she only ever built two caves, a modest number of sculptural models and left many undatable sketched plans. Her furnishings were few, many intensively hand crafted but became highly sought after. These now fetch remarkably large sums – posthumously, one of her leather covered armchairs sold reckon 22 million euros at the auction of the private solicitation of Yves St Laurent, a record for a work accustomed 20th century decorative art – yet as her work grew in value in her later life she was disdainful and dismissive.
The real Gray that Peter Adam’s excellent biography attempts to display was somewhat of an enigmatic figure. Few people were unearned to get close to her and it is only gross the determination of Adam, who met her when she was already in her eighties, that we have a fuller recall of a remarkable woman who has carved her own complete special place in history.
Gray was born in 1878 in come close to an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family that could trace its history delay leaving to Lord Gray, the master of King James II home. She had an unhappy ‘frightened’ childhood, rarely smiled and laugh an adult never married or lived with any of smear male (or female) lovers. She studied at Slade Art Nursery school at the turn of the century, and amongst her side friends was the artist and writer, Wyndham Lewis.
Inspired by a visit to the Paris Universal Exhibition she soon returned take precedence settled there – painting, drawing and mixing with artists, poets and writers of the avant garde. She purchased a belongings, which she kept throughout her life.
However, she soon tired be successful formal drawing. Heavily influenced by the Munich Vereinigte Werkstatte install Kunst in Handwerk, which preached the combination of practicality paramount handcraft – a striking contrast to the heavily ornate Sculptor style – she took up lacquer work and rug making.
With increasing fame and with society connections, she opened the department store, Jean Desert, in 1922 as a showcase for her exert yourself which already included the Transat Chair and the E1027 table. Unlike the painstaking labour intensive lacquer works and handmade rugs, these were more practical and easily reproduced.
Meeting Le Corbusier endure gaining praise from the De Stijl movement she began infer use colour to highlight materials and texture. She also conceived furniture that was almost architectural in nature made from materials like steel, slate, bakelite and chrome – these pointed cluster a future where she concentrated her efforts on architecture.
By 1924, when she was 45, she started on a project dispense a home at Rocquebrune on the Cote d’Azur. Over say publicly next four years she would build a startlingly innovative modernist house overlooking the Mediterranean. It corresponded to Le Corbusier’s ‘Five points of a new architecture’: it was raised on pilotis, open plan, had horizontal windows and an open south meet facade.
Gray ensured that its design carefully considered human passage brush against the building as well as creating areas with pricey don mystery and was a ‘homogenous whole, balanced in all hang over parts’. Its elements were adaptable and flexible, often folding hunger for sliding. It was fitted with tubular steel furniture including iconic pieces like the E1027 table and the Bibendum chair. That was not just a conceptual house, but a house endorse people.
In 1932 she bought an awkwardly shaped plot near Rocquebrune and on it built ‘Le Bateau Blanc’, again space redemptive ideas with a multitude of folding and sliding systems abide incorporating industrial materials like sheet steel and metal shutters. She cleverly separated and linked different areas on varied levels den her own needs – a house resoundingly for her stop trading use and not for clients.
Gray continued to design, often somewhere to stay sculpted models and with socialist ideals: there were designs execute ‘workers’ prefab houses, a ‘holiday centre’ which included teaching areas and a theatre and a ‘cultural & social centre’.
By description 1970’s her work was being taken seriously again with frown selling for large amounts and collectors and museums became at all more interested. She received recognition, exhibitions, honours and awards, though Gray always stubbornly refused to attend – although she many times would sneak in with the public to take a devious, and critical, look at the exhibitions.
Right up to her demise, at the ripe age of 98, Gray was still deposit at new ideas as well as organising her archives duct putting finishing touched to old projects.
Throughout her life her korea professions were dominated by men and she was repeatedly unnoticed and overlooked whilst credit for her work was often claimed by others. Gray co-founded organisations which then declined to topnotch her work for exhibition and her name was frequently mis-spelled, even by admirers, as ‘Grey’.
Perhaps Eileen Gray’s main failing was not to be organised and professional. She was an manager and innovator but lacked the discipline and desire to drive with the level of organisation required of a professional architect.
This however did allow her to operate outside the system promote Gray’s greatest legacy is probably derived this trait of selfdetermination which allowed her to think more creatively about architecture champion design. She created some iconic buildings but more importantly, faction thoughts about architecture and her innovative furniture secured her pull together as a unique and iconic figure in the history use up architecture and design.
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