Eileen Gray “Transat”
Eileen Gray was born into an aristocratic family in Ireland in1878. She was known to be independent and adventurous and at the age of 20 she enrolled at the Slade School of Art in London. Being an avant garde artist her individuality and ideas developed in Paris against its vibrant and artistic backdrop where she moved and eventually spent the rest of her life. In Paris she studied Japanese Lacquer (an extremely difficult thing to do!) and became the first western practitioner.
By the early 1920’s Gray was creating lacquered screens as well as architectural paneling and extravagant furniture. By the mid 1920’s she was mainly known for her art deco style under the influence of Le Corbusier. After 1930 Gray turned her attention to mainly architecture and worked very little in furniture and was largely forgotten until the1970s.
Today she is considered both a pioneer of Art Deco Design and Modernism!
The Transat Armchair was designed and made by Eileen Gray before 1929.
The chair was not mass produced and was designed for the house she had also designed with her lover Jean Badovici. The house (named the salon of E 1027) overlooked the Mediterranean with a clean simple space with straight lines and lots of light on the inside.
The chair combines luxury with functionally in a reminiscent way of deck chairs on transatlantic liners hence the name “Transat” chair.The chair is representative of Gray’s passion for architecture because every piece is very expressive of what it should be doing. The sycamore frame supports the slung piece of leather and the chrome joints hold it all together.
The curvaceous form of the seat contrasts strongly with the straight lines of the wooden frame. She also uses some of the chrome metal plates and wraps some joints to highlight them forcing us to draw attention to the physical structure of the chair.
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