Experimental female designer: Eileen Gray

Video (4:52): Experimental female designer: Eileen Gray. Video by V&A, London (2020).

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About Eileen Gray (1878-1976)

Modernist Irish architect, designer, visionary, and openly bisexual Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was born into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family. Her father, James MacLaren Smith, was a Scottish landscape painter who took his daughter on painting tours in Italy and Switzerland. Eileen Gray studied painting at London’s Slade School of Fine Art but soon sought another avenue for her creativity: craft, funiture design and architecture. Gray moved to Paris to study art in 1902 and lived in France for the rest of her life. She was a pioneer. In 1922, she set up a gallery from which she sold her own designs. From 1922/1923 to 1926 Gray created an informal architectural apprenticeship for herself and became an architect with no formal training. Her most famous work is the house known as E-1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. Early on Eileen Grey used luxurious materials like exotic woods, ivory and furs in her furniture design. In the mid-1920s, her pieces became simpler and more industrial. This reflects her growing interest in the aestetics of the Modernists.