The renowned and highly influential architect, furniture-maker, interior designer and photographer Eileen Gray was born in Ireland and remained throughout her life an Irishwoman at heart. An elusive figure, her interior world has never before been observed as closely as in this ground-breaking study of her work, philosophy and inner circle of fellow artists. Jennifer Goff expertly blends art history and biography to create a stunning ensemble, offering a clear beacon of light into truly understanding Gray - the woman and the professional. Gray was a self-taught polymath and her work was multi-functional, user-friendly, ready for mass production yet succinctly unique, and her designs show great technical virtuosity. Her expertise in lacquer work and carpet design, often overlooked, is given due attention in this book, as is her fascinating relationship with the architect Le Corbusier and many other compelling and complex relationships. The book also offers rare insights into Gray s early years as an artist. The primary source material for this book is drawn from the Eileen Gray collection at the National Museum of Ireland and its wealth of documentation, correspondence, personal archives, photographs and oral history.

"Largely neglected for much of her career, Eileen Gray was rediscovered in the late 1960s. Today she is regarded as one of the most important designers and architects of the twentieth century"--Publisher's description.

Meet Eileen Gray, the female architect behind the world-renowned E-1027 house and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. In 1924, her work began in earnest on a small villa by the sea in the south of France. Nearly a century later, this structure is a design milestone. But like so many gifted female artists and designers of her time, Eileen Gray's story has been eclipsed by the men with whom she collaborated. Dzierżawska's exquisite visuals illuminate the previously overlooked struggles and triumphs of a young queer Irish designer whose work and life came to bloom during the 'Années Folles' of early 20th century Paris.

The first book-length feminist analysis of Eileen Gray's work, Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity: Staying In argues that Gray's unusual architecture and design - as well as its history of abuse and neglect - emerged from her involvement with cultures of sapphic modernism. Bringing together a range of theoretical and historical sources, from architecture and design, communication and media, to gender and sexuality studies, Jasmine Rault shows that Gray shared with many of her female contemporaries a commitment to designing spaces for sexually dissident modernity. This volume examines Gray's early lacquer work and Romaine Brooks' earliest nude paintings; Gray's first built house, E.1027, in relation to Radclyffe Hall and her novel The Well of Loneliness; and Gray's private house, Tempe ?nbsp; Pailla, with Djuna Barnes' Nightwood. While both female sexual dissidence and modernist architecture were reduced to rigid identities through mass media, women such as Gray, Brooks, Hall and Barnes resisted the clarity of such identities with opaque, non-communicative aesthetics. Rault demonstrates that by defying the modern imperative to publicity, clarity and identity, Gray helped design a sapphic modernity that cultivated the dynamism of uncertain bodies and unfixed pleasures, which depended on staying in rather than coming out.

Neglected for most of her career, Eileen Gray (1878-1976) is now regarded as one of the most important furniture designers and architects of the early 20th century and the most influential woman in those fields. Her work inspired both modernism and Art Deco. Eileen Gray was to "stand alone" throughout her career, first as a lacquer artist, then a furniture designer, and finally as an architect. At a time when other leading designers were almost all male and mostly members of one movement or another -whether a loose grouping like De Stijl in the Netherlands or a formal one such as the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne-she remained staunchly independent. Her design style was as distinctive as her way of working, and Gray developed an opulent, luxuriant take on geometric forms and industrially produced materials used by the International Style designers, such as Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Mies Van der Rohe, who shared many of her ideals. Her voluptuous leather and tubular steel Bibendum Chair and clinically chic E-1027 glass and tubular steel table are now icons of the International Style. SELLING POINTS: * In addition to an introductory essay, this book analyses the main designs of these key modern architects through sketches, drawings, photos of the original works, and shots of period settings * A full illustrated chronology of all the featured works completes each volume. Reflecting the series' focus on design, special attention has been paid to the layout and binding, making these books designer objects in their own right. 180 illustrations

An in-depth study of the career of the highly original designer.