Eileen Gray (1878 – 1976, née Eileen Smith)

August 6, 2017

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A pioneer of both the Art Deco style and the functionalist Modernist movement, bisexual Irish aristocrat Eileen Gray was best known for designing the Bibendum chair and the E.1027 table. This great tastemaker lived primarily in South Kensington, Paris and the South of France and another of her creations, once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, the ‘Fauteuil aux Dragons’ armchair, sold for £19 million at auction in 2009.

Extremely private, Gray once remarked: “The art of the engineer is not enough… A house is not a machine to live in. It is the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation. Not only its visual harmony but its organisation as a whole, the whole work combined together, make it human in the most profound sense.”

A stunning example of Eileen Gray’s work, an S-bend chair, is on display in Room 135, The Dr. Susan Weber Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Eileen Gray also designed the ‘E.1027’ house at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, overlooking the Bay of Monaco in Franc as a gift for her lover, Jean Badovici, the editor of ‘L’Architecture Vivante’. ‘E’ is for Eileen, ‘10’ for the tenth letter of the alphabet, ‘J’ for Jean, ‘2’ for ‘B’ for Badovici and ‘7’ for ‘G’ for Gray. The building was completed in 1929.

The E-1027 table was designed for the eponymous house in 1927.

The Roll Call - WILDCARDS

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1 COMMENT

Margaret August 7, 2017 At 2:14 pm

Fabulous thanks. Had a wonderful quarter of an hour googling her. She wasn’t nee Smith, btw, her mother changed the children’s names to her sort-of-maiden name after she divorced Mr Smith. Her mother was Baroness Gray in her own right.
How did I have a meaningful life without Google and Wikipedia?

Reply

Giovanni

Art Science and Commerce

Eileen Gray (1878 – 1976, née Eileen Smith)

The Roll Call - WILDCARDS

1

Evelyn McHale (1923 – 1947)

2

Gabriel and Sarah A. Chrisman

3

Eileen Gray (1878 – 1976, née Eileen Smith)

4

Robert Adam

5

Lady Ridsdale DBE (1921 – 2009, née Victoire Bennett)

6

Bob Marshall-Andrews QC

7

Charlot Malin (1969 – 2017)

8

Baba Vanga (баба Ванга, AKA ‘Nostradamus from the Balkans’, 1911 – 1996)

9

Mr Make a Big Issue

10

Mary Millington (marital name Mary Maxted, born Mary Quilter, 1945 – 1979)

11

Sir Ken Adam OBE (born Klaus Adam, 1921 – 2016)

12

Will and Calum Thompson (AKA “The Eat Wild Boys”)

13

Arthur Woodham

14

Hannah Wick

15

Daniel Lismore

16

John Patrick Hannan

17

Max Whitlock (nicknamed “Maxi”)

18

Kelly Killoren Bensimon

19

Lee Miller (Lady Penrose, born Elizabeth Miller, 1907 – 1977)

20

Ted Richards

21

Victoria Pendleton CBE (married name Victoria Gardner)

22

Christopher Mason

23

Bonnie Lee Bakley (1956 – 2001)

24

Gino D’Acampo

25

Gillian Clarke (1941 – 2015)

26

Francesco Macera

27

Nicholas Loeb

28

Reverend Robert Parker

29

Gillian Duffy

30

David Hallberg

31

Ruthann Aron (AKA “Ruth Aron”, née Ruthann Greenzweig)

32

Lady Alice, Lady Eliza and Lady Violet Manners (AKA “The No Manners Girls”)

33

Topsy Taylor (born Lesley Taylor)

34

Peter Dinklage

35

Olivier Sarkozy and Mary-Kate Olson

36

Nina Campbell

37

Crispin Baynes

38

Bill Martin MBE (born William Wylie MacPherson)