Eileen Gray was one of the first women to be admitted to the Slade School of Art in London 1897, where she studied painting. In 1900 Gray visited Paris and the world exhibition, falling in love with the city, Gray located to Paris in 1902 where she continued her studies at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian. In 1904 Gray traveled to North Africa where she in Morocco learned how to weave and the process of dyeing wool with natural colours.
In 1905 she returned to London to take care of her ailing mother, while also learning lacquering techniques from antique restorers in Soho. Back in Paris, in 1906, she met Japanese lacquerware master Seizo Sugawara and under his guidance Gray became one of the first noteworthy Western practitioners of Japanese lacquering.
The following year Gray furnished her own apartment with furniture in the Art Deco style of her own design. The interiors were shown in various magazines which sparked her career as an interior decorator and designer. Gray soon set up a studio with Sugawara, and during the next two decades they collaborated on furniture such as the Serpent armchair (1917-19). In 1909 she began producing designs for rugs and hand-knitted carpets, a line of work she also opened a studio for in 1910. Three years later, Gray participated at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs which led her to be commissioned to design furniture for art-collector and fashion designer Jacques Doucet.
As an interior designer Gray’s first major commission was to redecorate and furnish the apartment of Madame Mathieu-Léyv, the owner of the boutique J. Suzanne Talbot. Among others Gray designed the Brick screen and a daybed for the apartment. The sofa Lota from 1924 was a development of a sofa designed for the apartment. In 1922 Gray opened her own showroom, called Galerie Jean Désert, while also participating in an exhibition of French artists in Amsterdam where she attracted the attention of De Stijl movement which secured her international reputation. Gray took inspiration from De Stijl in a bed-room interior for Monte Carlo, and exhibited a collection chromed steel, tubular metal and glass furniture in 1925.
In 1927 Eileen Gray established a collaboration with American designer Eyre de Lanux and two years later she was one of the founding members of Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM). Together with Romanian architect Jean Badovici Gray designed two modernist villas in Alpes Maritimes E1027 (1926-29) and Tempe a Pailla (1931-35). For the E1027 Gray designed several modernistic furniture such as the Transat lounge chair.
In 1937 Gray participated in the World fair in Paris with a holiday camp project as a part of Le Corbusier’s Pavilion des Temps Noveuaux. In 1972 Eileen Gray was awarded the title of Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA while also being the subject of a retrospective in London. Since 1978 her furniture is manufactured by Aram Ltd.
Eileen Gray passed away in 1976 at the age of 98. She is represented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Eileen Gray's Transat lounge chair was a part of the Female Traces exhibition at the Museum of Furniture Studies in 2019/2020.
