Eileen Gray’s designs – from her earliest works dating to just before the Great War up until her very last experiments in the 1970s – consistently reflect the subtlety and individuality of her eye. She was very much in tune with whatever was ‘dans le vent’ in the decades through which she worked, but she never followed fashion, always finding a topical yet personal path. The present pair of lamps are no exception, an elegant product of their era, yet aligning with no specific fad or style. This design is best known through the single, carved ivory version that Gray kept for her personal use and that featured in the eventual sale of her estate (Collection Eileen Gray, Sotheby’s Monaco, 25th May 1980, lot 289). The present pair has an equally specific and personal provenance, having been in the possession of Louise Dany, Gray’s loyal long-term housekeeper, who became a close and constant support through so many decades. The absence of any reference to such a lamp in the sale ledgers or closing-down residual stock-list of Gray’s Galerie Jean Désert, suggests that, like so many of her designs, this model was not commercialised. The present pair, like the ivory version that was illustrated in Wendingen in 1924, were likely made in the early 1920s. It was in the nature of Gray’s creative curiosity that she would rarely return to a design, except perhaps, in the last years of her life, to refine or recreate it for exhibition or to develop reference models, notably in association with Zeev Aram, for series production. This model was most likely created in collaboration with Kichizo Inagaki, the Japanese cabinetmaker and sculptor employed by Gray to sculpt a number of the furniture forms, fittings and objects that she had conceived. Surviving documents in the Eileen Gray archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, include invoices, correspondence and receipts from Inagaki, dating from 1919 through the early 1920s, confirming his execution of various elements in carved ivory and wood. The refined shapes of the present lamps’ slender two-part stems, each part of gently bowed triangular section, off-set, one above the other, correspond precisely to the kind of skilled translation of Gray’s ideas into a physical artefact that Inagaki was so adept at fulfilling.

EILEEN GRAY (1879-1976)

A RARE PAIR OF TABLE LAMPS, CIRCA 1920

Details

EILEEN GRAY (1879-1976)
A RARE PAIR OF TABLE LAMPS, CIRCA 1920
sycamore, macassar ebony, patinated bronze fittings with silk shades, one lamp with original light switch
each 17 ½ in. (44.5 cm.) high

Provenance

Louise Dany;
Galerie Gilles Peyroulet, Paris;
Galerie Vallois, Paris, Salon Champ de Mars, 1990;
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Sale room notice

Please note that Christie’s has a direct financial interest in this lot.

Please note that only one light switch is original, not both as noted in the catalogue.

Lot Essay

cf. Eileen Gray, Wendingen, 1924, pl. 8, lower right for the ivory version illustrated;
P. Adam, Eileen Gray: Architect/Designer, London, 1987, p. 136 for a similar model in ivory;
P. Garner, Eileen Gray: Designer and Architect, Cologne, 1993, p. 120 for a similar model in ivory;
F. Baudot, Eileen Gray, Paris, 1998, pp. 42 and 78 for a similar example in ebony;
Exhibition catalogue, Eileen Gray, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013, p. 161 for a similar model in ivory.
J. Goff, Eileen Gray, Her Work and Her World, Co. Kildare, Ireland, 2015, p. 209 for a similar model in ivory.

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