The exhibition on Eileen Gray (1878-1976) at the London Design Museum recognizes one of the most original design of the first half of the twentieth century, whose work influenced both modernism and in the Art Deco.
Eileen Gray studied at the Slade School of Design in London and in full 20's opened a gallery in the famous Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. They innovated with their creations lacquered, with a method he had learned from a Japanese craftsman, furniture and executed with new industrial materials, especially steel tubular.
designed furniture that combine maximum comfort with minimum space: folding chairs and hammocks, which could be drawn to the terrace or kept in any room, an elegant circular glass coffee table and tubular steel frame that allowed breakfast in bed, cabinets, revolving on its axis.
His first major exhibition was at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs Paris in 1923, but negative criticism warmly Montecarlo its sophisticated toilet, somebody said that seemed designed for the daughter of Dr. Caligari.
This exhibition will also show some of its original furniture, drawings and models of two of the houses he designed in southern France, near Saint Tropez.
The first, in the form of L, which he called cryptic E-1027, was conceived with Jean Badovici and she used the same rigor and identical economy in the interior spaces in interior design, with fixtures and windows that appear and disappear according to design needs.
Gray Between 1932 and 1934 built with the help of local craftsmen another house, near the first, which he named to Pailla Tempe, where he worked with local craftsmen and furniture he designed for comfortable, practical and above all extremely versatile.
continued working until his death in Paris 98 years, but spent the last thirty years documenting their work in a number of books in his apartment in the Rue Bonaparte, and his discovery the public did not come until 1968, thanks to Joseph Rykwert critical.
Rue de Lota Aartamento with Pirogue sofa.
