Eileen Gray for Jumo French Art Deco Bakelite Desk or Table Lamp, Late 1930s

Name: Eileen Gray for Jumo French Art Deco Bakelite Desk or Table Lamp, Late 1930s
Brand: Eileen Gray
Rating: 5 (47 reviews)

$1,500List Price

About the Item

French Art Deco modernist table or desk lamp by Eileen Gray for Jumo, France, late 1930s. Designed by Eileen Gray for the Jumo Company. Measures: Height 18.5" (47cm), diameter 13.4" (34cm). Made of Bakelite, metal and copper. The Bakelite base is in excellent condition. It comes with its metal internal reflector and shade. Metal parts have been repainted as original. The whole is in excellent condition! Delivered wired for your country (EU, US, Australia, etc.). Eileen Gray was born on 9 August 1878 into an aristocratic family near Enniscorthy, a market town in South-Eastern Ireland. Gray was the youngest of five children. Gray’s father was a painter who encouraged his daughter's artistic interests. He took his daughter on painting tours of Italy and Switzerland which encouraged her independent spirit. In 1898, Gray attended classes at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she studied painting. In 1900 her father died and she went on her first visit to Paris with her mother where she saw the Exposition Universelle. The main style at the fair was Art Nouveau and Gray was a fan of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh which was on exhibit. Soon after, Gray moved to Paris, but in 1905, due to her mother's illness, she settled back in London. She rejoined the Slade but found her drawing and painting courses were becoming less satisfying. Gray came across a lacquer repair shop in Soho where she asked the shop owner whether he could show her the fundamentals of lacquer work, as it had taken her fancy. The owner had many contacts from the lacquer industry and when Gray moved back to Paris in 1906 to an apartment (21 rue Bonaparte, Quartier Saint-Germain) where she remained for much of her working life, she met one of them: Seizo Sugawara (or Sugawara-san). He originated from an area of Japan that was known for its decorative lacquer work and had emigrated to Paris to repair the lacquer work exhibited in the Exposition Universelle. She found after working with Sugawara for four years that she had developed the lacquer disease on her hands, but she persisted in her work and it was not until she was thirty-five that she exhibited any. When she did, however, it was a success. Eileen Gray started making lacquered folding screens, circa 1910. In 1913 she first showed work at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, where she attracted the notice of the couturier and art collector Jacques Doucet, who became Eileen Gray's first major client. In 1914, when World War I broke out, Gray moved back to London, taking Sugawara with her. At the end of the war, they returned to Paris and Gray was given the job of decorating the Mme Mathieu Levy apartment in the rue de Lota in 1919. She designed most of its furniture, carpets and lamps, and installed lacquered panels on the walls. The result was favorably reviewed by several art critics who saw it as innovative. Given a boost from the success of the apartment, Gray opened up a small shop in Paris to exhibit and sell her work and that of her artist friends. In the 1920s, Eileen Gray came into contact with the Dutch Avant Garde group De Stijl and their abstract geometric works. At the same time, she was made acquainted with contemporary modern architecture through the French architect Jean Badovici. In 1924 Gray and Badovici began work on the house E-1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in southern France (near Monaco). The codename stands for the names of the couple: E for Eileen, 10 for Jean (J is the tenth letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray. Rectilinear and flat-roofed with floor-to-ceiling and ribbon windows and a spiral stairway descending to a guest room, E-1027 was both compact and open. Gray designed the furniture as well as collaborating with Badovici on its structure. Her circular glass E-1027 table and rotund Bibendum armchair were inspired by the recent tubular steel experiments of Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus (who had been inspired, in turn, by Mart Stam). Le Corbusier was quite impressed by the house, and built a summer house nearby. Le Corbusier left his mark on the building in the form of several colorful wall murals. Gray vehemently disapproved of the murals, created at Badovici's behest, as they destroyed the integrity of the wall planes. When Le Corbusier died in 1965 he was swimming in the sea directly in front of E-1027. (The house has been in poor repair for years, but plans for its renovation are being prepared by the French government, who have designated it a French National Cultural Monument.) In 1930-1931 Eileen Gray designed the furniture for Jean Badovici's flat. In 1934 their house, "Tempe e Pailla", was built in Castellar. In 1937, she agreed to exhibit her design for a holiday center in Le Corbusier's Esprit Nouveau pavilion at the Paris Exposition. During World War II Gray, along with all other foreigners, was forced to evacuate the coast of France and move inland. After the war discovered that her flat in Saint-Tropez had been blown up and that E1027 had been looted. Gray returned to Paris and led a reclusive life. She continued to work on new projects, but was almost forgotten by the design industry. When she was around seventy, she started to lose her sight and hearing, yet when she was eighty, she transformed a dilapidated agricultural shed outside Saint-Tropez into a summer home, she soon moved there and continued to work. Shortly before her death, Gray’s work was shown in an exhibition in London. At the age of ninety-eight, Gray died in her apartment on rue Bonaparte in Paris. In 1968, a complimentary magazine article drew attention to her accomplishments, and Gray agreed to production of her Bibendum chair and E-1027 table as well as numerous other pieces with Zeev Aram. They were soon to become modern furniture classics. Following the purchase of her archive in 2002, the National Museum of Ireland[2] at Collins Barracks, Dublin opened a permanent exhibition of her work. On 8 November 1972, the Doucet sale added to the interest which continues to this day in the 'antiques' of the twentieth century. Gray's 'Le Destin' screen was featured in the sale and went for $36,000. Collectors entered the chase, and Yves Saint Laurent's interest completed the mythification of her image. In February 2009, a "Dragons" armchair made by Gray between 1917-1919 (acquired by her early patron Suzanne Talbot and later part of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection) was sold at auction in Paris for 21.9 million euros (US$28.3 million), setting an auction record for 20th century decorative art.

Creator:
Eileen Gray (Artist)
Dimensions:
Height: 18.51 in (47 cm)Diameter: 13.39 in (34 cm)
Style:
Art Deco (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Bakelite,Copper,Metal
Place of Origin:
France
Period:
1930-1939
Date of Manufacture:
Late 1930s
Condition:
Refinished. Metal parts have been repainted as original. Wired for your country usage (EU, US, Australia, etc.).
Seller Location:
Saint-Amans-des-Cots, FR
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU2312322861162

Shop All Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray

Designer, artist and architect Eileen Gray was one of the most fascinating creative figures of the 20th century. Her body of work includes lustrous lacquered pieces — her Dragons chair set an auction record for modern furniture ($28 million) at the 2009 sale of the Yves Saint Laurent estate — and sleek chrome furnishings that rival the work of Le Corbusier and the members of the Bauhaus as exemplars of pure, modernist design.

The independent and unconventional daughter of Irish landed gentry, Gray studied painting at London’s Slade School of Fine Art in her early twenties before moving to Paris in 1906 to pursue her artistic dreams. Gray had become captivated by lacquerware after seeing an exhibit in the Victoria Albert Museum, and in Paris persuaded an expatriate Japanese master of the painstaking process, Seizo Sugawara, to teach her. Within a few years, Gray had become known among the cognoscenti for her sculptural lacquered furnishings, which she incorporated into the homes of interior design clients.

Gray was ever evolving as a designer. By the early 1920s she was creating geometric works that embodied the essence of Art Deco and the nascent modernist design movement. Some pieces — such as her Bricks screen, an assemblage of pivoting rectangular panels — employ the planar forms favored by Gerrit Rietveld and other De Stijl architects of the Netherlands. Others feature the tubular chrome framing used by Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. These include the Bibendum chair — named for the resemblance of its semicircular back and armrest to the character known in English as the Michelin Man — and the adjustable E 1027 side table, conceived in 1927 for the interiors of a stark white villa she designed for herself in the South of France.

Never a self-promoter, Gray drifted out of the limelight in the 1930s. Interest in her work was revived in the early ’70s, however, when the estates of her early clients came to auction. Her original lacquer pieces are the most coveted, but, as the sale of the Dragons chair shows, are rare and extremely expensive.

None of Gray’s designs were made in large numbers until, a few years before her death, she granted a production license. These pieces range in price from $1,000 to $2,500, depending on furniture type and condition. Gray’s work has become iconic of practical and elegant modernist design. Yet, as you will see on 1stDibs, many of her creations have a simplicity that makes them welcome even in a traditional setting.

Antique 1730s French Art Deco Table Lamps

Materials

Aluminum, Chrome, Iron

Art Déco table lamp by Eileen Gray. Manufacturer Jumo. France 1930s.

$3,097

H 14.97 in W 17.33 in D 9.85 in

Eileen Gray Jumo Desk Lamp

By Eileen Gray, Maison Jumo

Located in Vienna, AT

This desk lamp was designed by Eileen Gray and manufactured by Jumo, France in 1930s. A brass construction, features a gunmetal effect on the adjustable shade. The lamp remains in...

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