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Eileen Gray, edited by Cloé Pitiot and Nina Stritzler-Levine

$55.00

Cloé Pitiot and Nina Stritzler-Levine, editors

Named a 2020 50 Books | 50 Covers award winner by the AIGA, the professional association for design.

This publication was honored with the DAM Architectural Book Award 2020, which Deutsches Architekturmuseum bestows in collaboration with the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Winner of the 2022 Society of Architectural Historians Exhibition Catalogue Award

Eileen Gray (1878–1976), an Irish architect-designer who worked primarily in France, was a pioneer in modern design and architecture and one of the few women to practice professionally in those fields before World War II.

Born in Ireland and educated in London, Gray proceeded to Paris where she opened a textile studio, studied the Japanese craft of lacquer that would become a primary technique in her design work, and owned and directed the influential gallery and store known as “Jean Désert.” Gray struggled for acceptance as a largely self-taught woman in male-dominated professions. Although she is now best known for her furniture, lighting, and carpets, she dedicated herself to many architectural and interior projects that were both personal and socially driven, including E 1027, the iconic modern house designed with Jean Badovici, as well as economical and demountable projects, such as the Camping Tent.

Essays in the exhibition catalogue are organized in three sections: “Beginnings,” which focuses on Gray’s early life and training; “Being a Designer,” which examines her career as a designer of furniture, rugs, and interiors; and “Being an Architect,” which responds to the prevailing question of whether Eileen Gray was an architect with a resounding “yes”. This section features more than 44 catalogue entries on Gray’s architectural work organized by typology. It focuses on the diversity of Gray’s design practices and elaborates on the range of her architectural projects. Edited by Cloé Pitiot and Nina Stritzler-Levine, the volume contains contributions by the editors, as well as by Renaud Barrès, Caroline Constant, Philippe Garner, Jennifer Goff, Anne Jacquin, Fréderic Migayrou, and Ruth Starr. It also features more than 200 illustrations, including reproductions of the archival materials presented in the exhibition, extensive texts on Gray’s design work, previously unpublished architectural drawings, a chronology documenting the key moments of Gray’s life and career, critical encounters, and her worldwide travels.

Cloé Pitiot is curator of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and contemporary design at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Nina Stritzler-Levine is director of the gallery and curatorial affairs at the Bard Graduate Center, New York.

The exhibition Eileen Gray is on view at Bard Graduate Center Gallery from February 29 through July 12, 2020. 

 

Table of Contents

Director's Foreword
Susan Weber

Foreword
Serge Lasvignes and Bernard Blitène

Introduction and Acknowledgemets
Cloé Pitiot

Gallery Director's Commentary: Intersectionality
Nina Stritzler-Levine

Chronology
Jennifer Laurent and Marine Bry

Beginnings

1. Crossing Borders
Cloé Pitiot

Critical Encounters  Marine Bry

2. The Imagist
Frédéric Migayrou

3. Life in Ireland
Jennifer Goff

4. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl: A British Heritage
Olivier Gabet

5. Edwardian London: A City in Flux, or Learning from Syncretism
Catherine Barnard

Being a Designer

6. From the Second to the Fourth Dimension: Furniture in Perpetual Motion
Cloé Pitiot

7. The Lacquer Studio
Ruth Starr

8. Making Lacquer
Anne Jacquin

9. Rug Design
Jennifer Goff

Being an Architect

10. A New Approach to Modern Architecture: At the Border of Space and Time
Cloé Pitiot

11. E 1027 Maison en bord de mer, 1926–29
Renaud Barrès

12. Tempe a Pailla and Lou Pérou: The Architectural "Soul" of Eileen Gray
Caroline Constant

13. Tempe a Pailla: Working Independently
Caroline Constant and Jennifer Goff

14. Social and Architectural Forays: Architecture as "Suggestive Action"
Caroline Constant

Case Studies, Decorative Arts and Design
Philippe Garner and Cloé Pitiot

Case Studies, Architecture
Renaud Barrès, Caroline Constant, and Jennifer Goff

Checklist of the Exhibition

Historiography
Cloé Pitiot

Bibliography

About the Authors

 

Weight:
2.00 LBS
Quantity:

Other Details

ISBN
9780300251067

Page Count
500 | illustrated throughout

Publication date
February 2020

Binding
Softcover