Born in Ireland in 1878, Eileen Gray was a Modernist architect and designer. She died in 1976. A retrospective exhibition ‘Eileen Gray: Designer’ took place soon after her death, in 1979. Jasper visited it at the V&A during his foundation year. The exhibition travelled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jasper’s student sketchbooks show the mark her work left on him. He made the drawing above of the Transat chair while at Kingston and he kept it in his portfolio. The rotating drawers of his Sideboard, designed at Kingston, and the adjustability of his Rise Table, designed at the Royal College, reflect Gray’s influence.
One of the first design exhibitions on a museum scale that I happened to see was the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Eileen Gray exhibition in London. I had already decided I wanted to study Design but the exhibition made a big impression on me. I was drawn to her more structural pieces with a feeling of being able to understand them perfectly, as if hearing a language for the first time and knowing the meaning of the words. I realised before I left the museum that I wanted to design furniture.
The catalogue from the V&A’s exhibition in 1979. Eileen Gray’s Transat chair, designed in 1927. Jasper notes ‘From E. Gray’ above these sketches, which were done while he was a student at Kingston. They derive from the Asymmetric or Non-conformist armchairs.
