Chronology

Pitiot, Cloé; Stritzler-Levine, Nina

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Chronology

Cloé Pitiot (Editor), Nina Stritzler-Levine (Editor)

Eileen Gray

Chronology

Author

Cloé Pitiot (Editor), Nina Stritzler-Levine (Editor)

PublisherBard Graduate Center

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100138

Chronology

1878
Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith is born on August 9 in the family residence of Brownswood, in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland.

She is the youngest child of James Maclaren Smith, a painter, and Eveleen Pounden.

1895
Eveleen Pounden claims her right to the Gray name and becomes the 19th Lady Gray, and Eileen’s father changes his name to Smith-Gray. Henceforth Gray becomes part of Eileen’s surname and eventually her only surname. Eileen spends her childhood in both Enniscorthy, Ireland, and the family residence in South Kensington, London.

She takes frequent trips abroad to France, Egypt, and America, among other places.

1900
Her brother Lonsdale dies in the Boer War, then her father. First stay in Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle with her mother. Enrolls in the Slade School of Fine Art in London to study painting. Through her visits to the South Kensington Museum, (later Victoria and Albert Museum), she is acquainted with Asian lacquer.

1901
Begins studying Asian lacquer with Dean Charles in his London workshop at 92 Dean Street in Soho.

1902
Moves to Paris with a group of friends—which includes Kathleen Bruce and Jessie Gavin—to study drawing at the Académie Colarossi, rue de la Grande-Chaumière in Montparnasse.

Lives in an apartment at 3, rue Joseph-Bara, in the 6th arrondissement, with Bruce and Gavin. Studies at the Académie Julian on the rue du Dragon.

Exhibits a watercolor called Derniers rayons de soleil d’une belle journée (Last Rays of Sunshine on a Beautiful Day) at the 120th Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, in the Grand Palais.

1905
Exhibits a painting called Femme au sablier (Woman with Hourglass) at the 123rd Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, in the Grand Palais.

Returns to London to see her sick mother; resumes studying at the Slade School and at D. Charles’s workshop.

Contracts severe typhoid and goes to Algeria to recover.

1906–7
Settles in Paris and buys an apartment the following year at 21, rue Bonaparte, where she will live the rest of her life. In 1907, begins her collaboration with the Japanese lacquer artisan Seizo Sugawara.

1908–9
During a trip in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains with her friend Evelyn Wyld, they learn about the weaving and dyeing techniques of local artisans.

1909
Gray buys her first car, a Chenard & Walcker, and develops an interest in aviation.

1910
Opens a weaving workshop with Wyld at 17–19, rue Visconti in Paris, and begins designing rug patterns. The two women buy looms in England and invite a weaver to Paris to teach a group of trainees they have hired.

Opens a lacquer workshop with Sugawara at 11, rue Guénégaud in Paris.

1912
Travels across the United States with her sister Thora, Gabrielle Bloch, and Florence Gardiner.

1913
Exhibits four pieces at the 8th Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs, in the Pavillon de Marsan in Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs including an overmantel panel, Aum Mane Padme Aum, also known as Le magicien de la nuit (Magician of the night), and a lacquered panel, La Forêt enchantée (Enchanted forest). It draws the attention of several future patrons, including Élisabeth de Gramont, Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre, and couturier Jacques Doucet.

1914
Jacques Doucet buys the lacquer screen Le destin (Fate).

1915
Known to have exhibited a lacquered piece of furniture in the French section of the modern decorative arts pavilion at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. At the height of World War I, becomesan ambulance driver in Paris with Élisabeth de Gramont.

Returns to London with Sugawara. They open a workshop near Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Her older brother, James, is killed in the war.

1917
Returns to Paris. Resumes working in her lacquer and weaving workshops.

British Vogue publishes an article discussing her lacquer work.

1918
After her mother’s death, on December 24, Gray returns to her birthplace, Enniscorthy, for the funeral.

1919
Displays the lacquer screen, La nuit (Night), at the 10th Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs, in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Begins renovating an apartment at 9, rue de Lota for Juliette Lévy, known as Madame Mathieu Lévy, milliner and owner of the fashion brand J. Suzanne Talbot. Hires the cabinet maker Kichizo Inagaki to help her with the challenging work in the apartment’s entryway.

1920
Goes to Mexico and visits Teotihuacán. She is a passenger on the first postal flight to Acapulco.

1921
Buys a small weekend house on rue du Bas-Samois in Samois-sur-Seine. Two years later, she buys the adjacent house, using it first as a lacquer workshop for Sugawara and later joining the two houses together.

1922
On May 17, opens the Galerie Jean Désert at 217, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, where she sells her furniture and her rugs. Exhibits at the Salon d’Automne, in the Grand Palais.

Participates in the group exhibition Exposition Française d’Amsterdam. Industrie d’Art et de Luxe, organized by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Paleis Voor Volksvlijt in Amsterdam.

1923
Participates in the 14th Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs, held in the Grand Palais. Exhibits Une chambre à coucher boudoir pour Monte-Carlo (Bedroom/Boudoir for Monte Carlo) which receives mostly negative reviews from the French press. However, the design is very popular with Dutch critics, including De Stijl architects J. J. P. Oud and Jan Wils. Exhibits furniture at the 16th Salon d’Automne, held in the Grand Palais.

Starts designing the plans for an experimental project inspired by Adolf Loos’s Villa Moissi. This project was never completed.

1924
Exhibits in Pierre Chareau’s apartment installation at the 15th Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs in the Grand Palais. Participates in L’Architecture et les arts qui s’y rattachent (Architecture and Related Arts), an exhibition organized by the Amicale de l’École spéciale d’architecture. Wendingen, a Dutch avant-garde art and architecture magazine, devotes a special issue to Gray’s interiors; it includes an introduction by Jan Wils and an article by Jean Badovici.

1925
Visits the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht by Gerrit Rietveld and Truus Schröder-Schräder.

1926–29
Together with Badovici starts designing a vacation home for him in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, called E 1027.

Gray and Wyld display rugs at the annual Exposition d’Art Appliqué in the Musée Galliera in Paris. Designs House for an Engineer, which is never built. Makes several sketches for the renovation of the Battachon-Renaudin House in Vézelay.

1927
Wyld leaves Gray’s weaving workshop to open her own rug business with the American painter Eyre de Lanux.

Plays an essential role in the renovation of Badovici’s house located on rue de l’Argenterie in Vézelay. Gray provides financial assistance to carry out the original plan of the building and creates several sets of sketches and plans for the kitchen and bathroom (1927–31).

Provides financial assistance to Jean Badovici to purchase and renovate a small building on rue de la Porte-Neuve in Vézelay.

1929
One of the founding members of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM), a group of dissidents of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs.

Badovici publishes a special issue of L’Architecture Vivante called E 1027. Maison en bord de mer, dedicated to the villa.

Starts designing plans for a small Parisian studio apartment for Badovici at 7, rue Châteaubriand (completed in 1931). The Gray family home in Enniscorthy is sold.

1930
In collaboration with Badovici, shows photographs and plans of E 1027 at the first UAM exhibition in the Pavillon de Marsan in Paris. She is given a minor location and her work is not included in the catalogue.

Closes the Galerie Jean Désert and her lacquer workshop at 11, rue Guénégaud.

Renovates her apartment at 21, rue Bonaparte in Paris.

1931
At the second annual UAM exhibition, held in the Galerie Georges Petit, Gray shows plans for storage systems for modern apartments, photographs of the studio she designed for Badovici on rue Château briand, and designs for a Camping tent (1930–31) that resulted from her collaboration with Badovici.

Begins work on Tempe a Pailla, her first independent architectural project, on a site overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Castellar. Construction begins in 1934 and ends in 1935.

1933
Receives second commission from Juliette Lévy for an apartment on the boulevard Suchet. She designs a white sofa and two white Bibendum armchairs for the interiors that are featured in the May issue of L’Illustration with no mention of Gray’s name.

Begins work on a private commission for House for Two Sculptors. Participates in the 23rd Salon de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs, in the Grand Palais, where she exhibits furniture and chairs for an entryway, as well as photographs and architectural models. Shows furniture at the Salon d’Automne, held in the Grand Palais.

1934
Construction begins on Tempe a Pailla, in Castellar, outside Menton.

Resigns from the UAM. Goes to Mexico and travels back to Paris through New York, where she meets Frederick Kiesler.

1936
Designs the Ellipse house, a prefabricated house made up of modular units that can be easily assembled, dismantled, and moved. The design was never realized. Produces models for a Vacation Center (1936–37).

1937
Gray’s plans for the Vacation Center are exhibited at the Paris Exposition Internationale in Le Corbusier’s Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux. The project includes a parking platform, an office area, several holiday resorts, a campground, a restaurant, a recreational area, and a gymnasium. Le Décor de la vie de 1900 à 1925 (The Decor of Life from 1900 to 1925), an exhibit held in the Pavillon de Marsan during the Exposition Internationale, includes two pieces of furniture designed by Gray for couturier Jacques Doucet in the 1910s: a red-lacquered table known as Table au chars (Chariot table) and a double-sided lacquered screen entitled Le destin (Fate).

1938
Renovates her apartment on the quai de Suffren in Saint-Tropez.

1939
Buys a vineyard that includes an old stone building at Chapelle-Sainte-Anne, on the outskirts of Saint-Tropez. Here fifteen years later, Gray will begin renovation of her last architectural work. This was carried out in two major phases and in minor changes over time, as noted under 1954.

1941
As foreigners during the Second World War, Gray and several of her friends, including Kate Weatherby and Evelyn Wyld, are forced to leave the coastline for Lourmarin, in the Vaucluse.

Designs a house for Jean Badovici slated for land purchased in Casablanca, which will never be realized.

Designs a meditation garden for La Bastide Blanche in Saint-Tropez.

1946
Begins designing a Cultural and Social Center that includes a recreational area, a dining area, and a library. The design is never built.

1947
Completes plans for the Cultural and Social Center and begins Maison du Peuple. Maison de Peuple that is never built.

1953
Gray rejoins the UAM and plans to show designs for Tempe a Pailla in the exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne, which is cancelled.

1954
Renovates Lou Pérou, which will be completed in 1961.

1955
Sale of Tempe a Pailla to British painter Graham Sutherland. René Herbst publishes a catalogue that celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the UAM and includes E 1027 and Tempe a Pailla.

1956
Jean Badovici dies in Monaco on August 17.

Gray begins to gather documentation about her architectural work in two portfolios.

1959
The Cultural and Social Center (1946–47) is published in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.

1968
An article written by architecture historian Joseph Rykwert is published in Domus and draws attention to Gray’s work again.

1972
Gray is appointed “Royal Designer for Industry” by the British Society of Arts.

Le destin, the “Lotus” table, and the Bilboquet table are included in the Jacques Doucet sale at the Hôtel des Ventes de Drouot in Paris.

1973
Gray is elected an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Irish Architects.

A retrospective entitled Eileen Gray: Pioneer of Design is organized by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London.

1976
Eileen Gray dies in Paris on October 31 at the age of 98.

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