eileen gray

eileen gray is superb.
above and below is her e-1027 house.
and there are also some images of her interior and furniture designs.
ouno design has the most comprehensive posts on this house.
and this golden smith post on the Le Corbusier obsession with it is really great.
edit: and mary's post on Le Corbusier's cabanon (situated just above e-1027) is really interesting.

i first started this post a while ago after seeing a wonderful documentary on her.
i was really interested to see her lacquer work, using japanese techniques
and working with a japanese artist called sugiwara:

"Allured by the antique Chinese and Japanese lacquer screens in the shop, Eileen asked if she could learn the rudiments of lacquer working. By the time she returned to Paris in 1906, she was obsessed by the art of lacquer and, thanks to Mr Charles’ contacts, had an introduction to a young lacquer craftsman, Sugiwara. He came from Jahoji, a village in northern Japan famous for its lacquer work and agreed to teach her. In 1907, Gray found a spacious first floor apartment at 21 rue Bonaparte where she could live and work and persuaded her mother to increase her allowance so that she could afford the rent. Three years later, Gray bought the apartment outright and thereafter it became her main home. Gray studied with Sugiwara for four years. Lacquer work was not only painstaking, but perilous. Like many people who come into close contact with it, she contracted a painful ‘lacquer disease’ on her hands. Slowly she refined her technique to create stark forms with simple geometric decorations. This simplicity was, however, as much a product of the complexity of the process as of Gray's aesthetic preferences. "

text source: design museum

sugiwara desu.

eileen gray's lacquered screens