Eileen Gray spent the years of the First World War in London
with Sugawara, and no her return to Paris in 1919 she received
her most ambitious decorative commission - the Rue de Lota
apartment of Mme Mathieu Lèvy, known professionally as the
model Suzanne Talbot. By 1922 Gray was in a position to open
her own gallery, Jean Dèsert, in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honorè,
Paris to display and sell her furniture, lamps, mirrors and
carpets, which she found economical to produce in small series
of four and five Although her principal interest was still
lacquer work, it was her carpets, woven in her Rue Visconti
studio by apprentices supervised by Evelyn Wyld, which sold
best. In 1923, Gray created an ambitious display for the Salon
Des Artistes Decorators entitled a “ Room-boudoir for Monte
Carlo ”. Although the French critics ware unanimous in their
contempt, her work received the acclaim of architects such
as J.J.P. Oud and Walter Gropius, and she was encouraged to
exhibit at the Salon D'Automne with Le Corbusier and Robert
Mallet-Stevens. In 1924 she began to make architectural studies
herself, and in 1927, in collaboration with lean Badovici,
designed E-1027 at Roquebrune. Gray closed Jean Désert in
1930 to concentrate on architecture, and her subsequent architectural
works include a Paris apartment for Badovici (1930-31), the
Tempe a Pailla, Castellar (1932-34) and several projects The
career of Eileen Cray represents a perfect illustration of
the transition from the exotic, individual craftsman-made
objects of the early l92Os to the purposefully functional
architecture and furniture of the Modem Movement Her early
work, exemplified in the interior for Mme Lévy, is characterised
by unusual) forms, often influenced by the current vogue for
African art, and exotic materials and colours. The chairs
in the Rue de Lota apartment - salmon silk and orange armchairs,
the former with arms carved to resemble the heads of rearing
serpents, and a brown lacquered day-bad - were designed to
compliment the genuine African objects and wild animal skins
of Mme Lévy's collection, and the ensemble perfectly captures
the luxury and eccentricity of 1920s Paris. In the designs
for her own houses, however, Gray used harder, more geometrical)
forms, industrial materials and a more limited colour range.
The functional simplicity of chairs such as the Transit chair
of 1927, in black leather and chromed steel, Is perfectly
in keeping with the stark, Modernist interiors, and shows
an acceptance of the new trends of the Modern Movement.
