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).
Egg Collective present ‘Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors’
Shocked to see how ‘disrupted by war and stymied by sexism, the breadth, beauty and sheer originality of Gray’s work was nearly lost to history’, Egg Collective’s Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis and Hillary Petrie realised that only three buildings out of the 50 works of architecture designed by Gray were ever realised.
Beamer, Ellis and Petrie were keen to explore Gray’s fascinating career – spanning the estates of Ireland’s County Wexford, bohemian Edwardian England, and Paris’ art deco 1920s – as well as her design philosophy, noting that for Gray, a home was not a functionalist machine but a place for living. ‘In fact, one of her most iconic products – an adjustable height chrome and glass side table – was designed for eating toast in bed without getting crumbs on the sheets,’ they say.
Delving into various books and Gray’s archives, the trio came across a never-built project called the House for Two Sculptors. Struck by its egg-shaped atelier, the collective decided to reimagine it in its own Tribeca Gallery. ‘Laid out circa 1933-1934 as a communal synthesis of living and working spaces for unknown clients, it featured a bi-level workshop adjoined to a modest yet spacious domestic area, the two spheres sharing an aesthetic basis while remaining discrete in function,’ they say.
Inspired by Gray’s aesthetic and how the house was designed as a staging area for sculptural works, the exhibition comprises a series of vignettes showcasing the work of two contemporary sculptors, Taylor Kibby and Molly Haynes, as well a curated selection of designs by Egg Collective – including the new ‘Eileen’ mirror, inspired by the patterns found in Gray’s geometric textile designs.
The Designing Women series launched in 2017 with an exhibition bringing together 15 New York-based, female-led design companies, including Lindsey Adelman and Bec Brittain. The second edition focused on ‘Masters, Mavericks, Mavens’ such as Cini Boeri and Sabine Marcelis, while the third zoomed in on the theme of motherhood, starring legendary creatives such as Charlotte Perriand, Faith Ringgold and Louise Bourgeois.
By focusing on Gray for the series’ fourth iteration, Egg Collective ‘hopes to shed light on her unsung contributions as an extraordinary pioneer in the field, while bringing greater visibility to the still rare phenomenon of female-authored design amid the masculine-centric modernist landscape.’ A limited-edition exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase, with proceeds going to Girls Garage, a non-profit design and construction school.
‘Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptures’ is at Egg Collective Showroom, 151 Hudson Street, New York during New York Design Week and until 14 June 2024.
eggcollective-designingwomen.com
