*** Welcome to piglix ***

Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray.jpg
Eileen Gray
Born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith
9 August 1878
Enniscorthy, Ireland
Died 31 October 1976 (aged 98)
Nationality Irish
Alma mater Slade School of Fine Art
Académie Julian
Académie Colarossi
Occupation Architect, furniture designer
Parent(s) James McLaren Smith
Eveleen Pounden
Buildings E-1027
Tempe à Pailla House
Design Bibendum Chair
E-1027 table

Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray (9 August 1878 – 31 October 1976) was an Irish architect and furniture designer and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture.

Gray was born as Katherine Eileen Moray Smith on 9 August 1878, near Enniscorthy, a market town in south-eastern Ireland. Her father, James McLaren Smith, was a painter who encouraged his daughter's artistic interests. Her mother was Eveleen Pounden, a granddaughter of Francis Stuart, 10th Earl of Moray; she became the 19th Baroness Gray in 1895, upon the death of her own mother, née Lady Jane Stuart. After that, Lady Gray, who had separated from her husband in 1888, changed her children's surname to Gray.

Gray had four siblings:

Gray spent most of her childhood living in the family's homes in Ireland or South Kensington in London.

In 1898, Gray attended classes at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she studied painting. While there, she met Jessie Gavin and Kathleen Bruce. In 1900 her father died and she went on her first visit to Paris with her mother, where she saw the Exposition Universelle, a World's fair that celebrated the achievements of the past century. The main style at the fair was Art Nouveau and Gray was a fan of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh which was on exhibit. Soon after, Gray moved to Paris along with her friends Gavin and Bruce from the Slade School. She continued her studies in Paris at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi. For four or five years after the move, Gray travelled back and forth from Paris to Ireland to London, but in 1905, due to her mother's illness, she settled back in London. She rejoined the Slade but found her drawing and painting courses were becoming less satisfying.

Gray came across a lacquer repair shop in Soho, in London, where she asked the shop owner, D. Charles, whether he could show her the fundamentals of lacquer work, as it had taken her fancy. The owner had many contacts from the lacquer industry and when Gray moved back to Paris in 1902 to an apartment where she remained for much of her working life, she met one of them, Seizo Sugawara. He came from an area of Japan known for its decorative lacquer work and had emigrated to Paris to repair the lacquer work exhibited in the Exposition Universelle. She found after working with Sugawara for four years that she had developed lacquer disease on her hands, but she persisted in her work and it was not until 1913, when she was thirty-five, that she exhibited any of her lacquer work. When she did, however, it was a success.


...
Wikipedia

...