Eileen Gray was born in 1878 in Ireland and died in 1976 in France. Gray was raised in London and was one of the first women to be accepted into the Slade Art School in 1898. She studied painting and also learned lacquer work, before moving to Paris in 1922, where she studied at private art schools. She dealt intensively with cabinet-making and lacquer techniques and established herself as a leading designer of refined pieces of furniture and wall panels in Art Nouveau and Art Deco style, inspired by Japanese tradition, in 1910.
In 1922, Eileen Gray opened her own workshop and gallery in Paris. Her contacts with the architects Le Corbusier and Bob Oud encouraged her, in collaboration with Jean Badovici, to design her own house, E.1027, on the French Riviera - a house that blends in with the landscape and for which Gray also designed the furniture.
Eileen Gray's "Dragons" armchair, designed in 1918, an Art Deco leather armchair, reached a price of nearly 22 million Euro at an auction and set a price record for the sale of a seat designed in the 20th century. To furnish her house, Eileen Gray designed the table E.1027, an aesthetical and functional table devoid of decoration. This height-adjustable metal and glass table is exhibited at the MoMa in New York. The designs by Eileen Gray were sometimes far ahead of their times. That is why Eileen Gray's light fixtures Pailla, Roattino, the functional floor lamp ClassiCon Tube Light, or the illuminated mirror Satellite have a classical reduced design which still looks elegant and contemporary nowadays.