A trained artist and passionate lacquer craftswoman, Irish designer Eileen Gray created sought-after interiors for the Parisian elite and opened her own shop on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where her customers included James Joyce and Elsa Schiaparelli. Yet for too long her work – including the iconic ‘Bibendum’ chair and ‘Brick’ screen – has been overshadowed by that of her contemporaries, not least Le Corbusier, who infamously defaced the walls of her modernist home on the Mediterranean coast and whose steel tubular furniture launched a good two years after Gray’s.
It’s an unfortunate situation that the founders of New York-based design firm Egg Collective are keen to rectify, with their new exhibition ‘Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors’ during New York Design Week 2024 (and on view until 14 June).
