Eileen Gray was born in Ireland from an affluent, artistic family background. An architect-designer she doesn't fit easilyinto a category, befitting a designer with such a strongly individual reputation, one who lead the way for women in modern design.
Eileen Gray trained at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. In 1902 she moved to France, following an enormously influential visit to the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, where she trained in drawing and in the art of lacquer.
At first Eileen designed highly individual furniture incorporating her lacquering work, later turning to interior design. In 1922 she opened the gallery "Jean Desert" as a showroom for her own work. Eileen Gray was highly regarded by many leading artist of her time, including artists from the Bauhaus. From 1926 she worked as an architect and developed several architectural projects with Le Corbusier in the "Pavillon Des Temps Noveaux" at the Paris Fair in 1937. The result is a wide-ranging body of work from luxurious decorative items such as "Le Destin", her four panel lacquered screen, to modern architectural projects.
Perhaps her best known works are her famous "Bibendum" chair, a Bauhaus inluenced tubular steel and glass bedside table and her "Transat" armchair which combined a modern profile with comfortable materials, showing her willingmness to be influenced by but independent from the slavishly modernist mainstream of the period.
