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Even though she may not be as famous as Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, no one could ever misbelieve that Eileen Gray is one of the greatest furniture inventors of the modern period. Regarded as a top establisher of the Modern design movement, Gray’s creations for furniture broke the principles of customary furniture design and gave opportunities or other designers to follow.

Born on August 1878 near close to the town of Enniscorthy, Ireland, Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray was the youngest child of the well-to-do Scottish-Irish Gray race. Her father, James Maclaren Gray, observed young Eileen’s interest for the arts and often grabbed her along painting tours in Italy and Switzerland. By the point she was eighteen years old Gray was educated at the Slad School of Fine Art at the University College London but then moved to the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi in Paris when her father passed on in 1900. Eileen Gray went back to London in 1905, and it was there that she gain knowledge of lacquerwork in Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese lacquer restorer employing in Paris.

Eileen Graycreated several architectural and furniture creations in her career, but most likely the one she is best considered for would be that of the Rue de Lota apartment. In 1917, Gray was assigned by Mathieu Lévy, a boutique holder who sold fashionable hats, to renovate the interior of her apartment in the Rue de Lota suburb in Paris. It was during this time that Gray completed some of her seminal creations, including the Block Screen lacquered wall piece, the Pirogue Sofa, the Bibendum Chair, and the Serpent Chair. By the time the work in was made in 1921 evaluators immediately congratulated Gray’s work, proclaiming her designs a “triumph of modern living”. Uplifted by the critical and financial victory of her Rue de Lota project, Gray build up her personal shop in Paris, named the Jean Desert, where she could present her [creations|styles}.

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