2003.332, letter from Eileen Gray to Prunella Clough, date and year unknown.
129NMIEG 2003.337, letter from Eileen Gray to Prunella Clough, 1960. Bernard Buffett (1928-1999) was a French expressionist and member of the Anti-Abstract Group L’homme Témoin (the Witness Man). Gray also mentions Annabel Schwob (1928-2005) – Dubuffet’s wife, who was an actress, in this letter.
130Stella, Frank, Hyena Stomp, 1962, Alkyd paint on canvas, 77x77cm, London, Tate Gallery.
131NMIEG 2003.311, letter from Eileen Gray to Prunella Clough, 9 January, year unknown.
132Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 12 October, year unknown, possibly 1966.
133Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 27 November 1961.
134Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 27 November 1961.
135NMIEG 2003.340, letter from Eileen Gray to Prunella Clough, Monday, late 1960s.
136Ibid, Adam, p.138.
137Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 30 March 1962, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, page two part of a letter April 1962 – possibly page two of letter 30 March 1962.
138Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, Stephen Haweis Papers, Arranged Miscellaneous Memoirs, Box 2, letter from Eileen Gray to Stephen Haweis, 27 November 1961.
4
The Realm of Lacquer
In 1854, after more than 200 years of isolation, Japan reopened its ports to western trade and in so doing provided a fresh source of artistic inspiration to the West. Japanese furniture which came into the European market was praised for its simplicity, purity of form and strong feeling for nature. In a reaction against ornate historical eighteenth-century furniture styles, British designers tried to capture the spirit of the East with its use of lacquered wood finish and an emphasis on structural design. Functional elements such as hinges and key plates became decorative. In England tastes were also being defined by Liberty department store, which became a major outlet for artistic items when it was opened by Arthur Lazenby Liberty (1843-1917) in Regent Street in May 1875. His talent for acquiring tasteful objet d’art from Japan and the East was noted by the furniture designer E.W. Godwin (1833-1886) with Godwin describing the excitement of Liberty’s customers when a new shipload of goods arrived on the pavement outside the Regent Street shop. This atmosphere was so intense that customers, ecstatic over the silks, fans, rugs, china and enamelware, would demand that the packing cases be opened in the street. This combined with the influence of the Aesthetic Movement compounded the Anglo-Japanese style which developed in the period from 1851-1900. The Museum of Ornamental Art (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) bought Japanese lacquer and porcelain in 1852 and in 1854. In 1875-1897 The National Museum of Ireland had acquired a number of Japanese items, notably lacquer pieces which were displayed in Kildare Street in Dublin. Articles appeared in The Irish Times regarding these exhibits from 1885 through to 1890. Gray spent her childhood between London’s South Kensington and Enniscorthy in Wexford. Recorded in her archives are day trips spent in Dublin with her mother where it is possible that she saw some of these pieces.
4.1 Eileen Gray, 1896, black and white photograph © NMI
4.2 Eileen Gray, late 1910s, early 1920s, black and white photograph © NMI
Gray was also exceedingly interested in the Aesthetic, Decadent and Symbolist movements having a number of key publications in her library. These movements emphasised the use of symbols, sensuality and the correspondence between words, colours and music, which defined Gray’s ideas of synaesthesia. Lacquer was an ideal medium which encompassed all of these movement’s ideas of engaging with the senses, providing the user with a refined sensuous pleasure. It was a craft whereby touch and sight were actively engaged from the beginning of the creative process through to the end result.
4.3 Room installation, Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, James McNeill Whistler, 1876-1877, oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, leather, and wood © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, Gift of Charles Lang Freer
By the 1880s the Anglo-Japanese style had become a major influence in these movements culminating in Whistler’s Peacock Room.1 Gray owned The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 1908.2 In this publication Gray saw images and read the story behind the commission for Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room – Whistler’s masterpiece of interior decorative mural art. He had painted the panelled room in a rich and unified palette of scintillating blue-greens with an over-glazing of metallic gold leaf. Painted in 1876-77 the interior became an example of the Anglo-Japanese style. The mural decoration of this room dominated the architectural interior and its features. Gray’s instinctive reaction against the luxury and exuberance of the room would culminate in her eventual conviction that ‘architecture must be its own decoration’.3 However Whistler’s palette in The Peacock Room would later reappear in Gray’s lacquer work from 1908 onwards, as she strove to faithfully create and perfect the recipe for blue lacquer.
While attending the Slade School in London in 1900 Gray serendipitously encountered the medium of lacquer.4 During her lunch hour Gray saw the Asian lacquer displays at the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum. She also wandered around Soho looking at shops. By chance she passed a furniture restoration shop on Dean Street belonging to Dean Charles.5 Offering her services to become a pupil, she was invited to study the materials of lacquer screens that he had been restoring. Charles was an Asian screen and furniture restorer and he used mostly European varnishes to repair the screens but had some varnish from China. When Gray returned from her art studies in Paris for a two-year spell in 1905 she resumed her education in lacquer from Dean Charles, and they remained friends for many years. She continued to ask his advice about colours and she also ordered supplies from him long after she had established herself as a reputable designer in Paris.6 ‘Lacquer always fascinated me’, Gray claimed many years later.7
It is not clear if Gray purchased the book A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, 1688 by John Stalker and George Parker, prior to her tutelage with Dean Charles
