Born Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray on August 1878 in Brownswood nearby Enniscorthy, west Ireland, Eileen Gray is a stylist, architect and lacquer artist who pioneered the Modern design movement in the 20th century. Like her colleagues Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Gray’s designs for architecture and furnishings were among the earliest models of modern design and are recognized to be among the best of our time.

The youngest child of the well-to-do Scottish-Irish Gray family, Eileen Gray attended the esteemed Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury, London in 1898., but transferred shortly after to the Ecole Colarossi and the Academie Julian in Paris when her father passed away in 1900. Gray in the end returned to London in 1905, where during a visit to the Soho district she became captivated with lacquer-creation. She later studied lacquerwork under the tutelage of Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese lacquer stylist working for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. After which in 1913, Gray made her very first exposition presenting some of her attractive panels all through the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.

Eileen Gray begun her career as a lacquer artist before going into furniture design and architecture. The buildings she made were identified for their extensive and narrow interior spaces and plenty stages for storage and viewing decks, a nod to her liking to ship architecture. In addition, Gray would also often design furnishings with the express purpose of placing them inside the interiors of the buildings she created and decorated. Some remarkable furniture designworks she made include the Bibendum Chair, the Biboquet Table, and the E-1027 Table Lamp.

Regardless of of her accomplishments, Gray’s career went downhill after World War II when her houses and most of her possessions in France were ruined by the retreating German Army. Eileen Gray resided in France for the remainder of her life, eventually regaining most of her position in the public eye after being featured importantly in design magazines. Later after a victorious sale of her work was launched, Gray passed away on October 1976 in Rue Bonaparte, France.

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