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Lot Essay
This lot will be included in the catalogue raisonné written by Mr. Patrice le Faÿ d’Etxepare d’Ibarrola.
The ‘Bibendum’ has become one of Eileen Gray’s most celebrated designs. Re-editions proliferate, but surviving original examples are of the greatest rarity. The model was created in the late 1920s when Gray was creating furniture in a new idiom for the villa E1027 that she was designing and building on a rocky site overlooking the Mediterranean at Roquebrune. With this project, she moved on from her sumptuous work in lacquer; in the spirit of a new, utopian Modernism, she explored the possibilities of modest, even industrial materials and she brought her unique visual intelligence to bear on the challenge of creating furniture that was functional yet able to delight. She became a pioneer in the use of tubular steel, following very closely on the heels of Marcel Breuer, and devised novel solutions to the conventional problems of seat and table design – none more inspired or engaging than her ‘Bibendum’. Her source of inspiration was the jovial figure built from tyres created by manufacturer Michelin to promote their product. The mass of the welcoming butter-coloured upholstered forms seems to float in space above the most minimal opentubular steel base. Gray has ensured that the necessary bulk of the seat is balanced by a very light footprint.
The present version is one of a pair purchased from Gray in 1930 by a most distinguished client, Jeanne Tachard, revealing a close-woven set of connections. Tachard was a friend of the great couturier and art collector Jacques Doucet, Gray’s first important client. Tachard was also professionally involved in the world of fashion as an associate in the fashion house of Suzanne Talbot. Through the 1920s, it was Tachard’s associate Juliette Lévy who adopted the professional identity of Suzanne Talbot. It was under this name that she was shot for the cover of a fashionable magazine, L’Officiel, in 1926, and in the same year posed for Harper’s Bazar [sic, it became Harper’s Bazaar in November 1929] in her Paris apartment, refurbished between 1919 and 1922 by Gray with splendid lacquer wall panels and furniture. Tachard and Lévy also shared a taste for African artefacts – a taste perhaps inspired by Doucet – and both were to acquire ‘Bibendum’ armchairs – the very height of sophisticated avant-gardism.
Philippe Garner
The ‘Bibendum’ has become one of Eileen Gray’s most celebrated designs. Re-editions proliferate, but surviving original examples are of the greatest rarity. The model was created in the late 1920s when Gray was creating furniture in a new idiom for the villa E1027 that she was designing and building on a rocky site overlooking the Mediterranean at Roquebrune. With this project, she moved on from her sumptuous work in lacquer; in the spirit of a new, utopian Modernism, she explored the possibilities of modest, even industrial materials and she brought her unique visual intelligence to bear on the challenge of creating furniture that was functional yet able to delight. She became a pioneer in the use of tubular steel, following very closely on the heels of Marcel Breuer, and devised novel solutions to the conventional problems of seat and table design – none more inspired or engaging than her ‘Bibendum’. Her source of inspiration was the jovial figure built from tyres created by manufacturer Michelin to promote their product. The mass of the welcoming butter-coloured upholstered forms seems to float in space above the most minimal opentubular steel base. Gray has ensured that the necessary bulk of the seat is balanced by a very light footprint.
The present version is one of a pair purchased from Gray in 1930 by a most distinguished client, Jeanne Tachard, revealing a close-woven set of connections. Tachard was a friend of the great couturier and art collector Jacques Doucet, Gray’s first important client. Tachard was also professionally involved in the world of fashion as an associate in the fashion house of Suzanne Talbot. Through the 1920s, it was Tachard’s associate Juliette Lévy who adopted the professional identity of Suzanne Talbot. It was under this name that she was shot for the cover of a fashionable magazine, L’Officiel, in 1926, and in the same year posed for Harper’s Bazar [sic, it became Harper’s Bazaar in November 1929] in her Paris apartment, refurbished between 1919 and 1922 by Gray with splendid lacquer wall panels and furniture. Tachard and Lévy also shared a taste for African artefacts – a taste perhaps inspired by Doucet – and both were to acquire ‘Bibendum’ armchairs – the very height of sophisticated avant-gardism.
Philippe Garner