publication became important in her instruction. She readily stated that she always had an interest in lacquer. This seventeenth-century book became one of the main manuals on lacquer and japanning not only of that period but for generations afterwards.8 This publication had been extremely popular in England during the latter part of the seventeenth century, especially amongst women who were encouraged to learn Japanning as a pastime. The book was intended to assist not only amateur decorators, but also professional cabinetmakers. It contains instructions on the use of colours on Japanning and gilding, and the staining or varnishing of wood. The reader not only became a chemist familiarising themselves with proportions, ingredients, quantities and the reaction of chemical precipitates, but also an alchemist, transforming raw materials into textures, which when applied to an object created a work of art. It was similar to magic, appealing to the senses by touch, sight and smell. Wood stain could also turn vile substances into pure colours, almost like a magical art. For example Brazil wood had to be mixed in stale urine or water impregnated with pearl-ashes to produce a bright red colour. Pale red was obtained by dissolving an ounce of a red gum called dragon’s blood in a pint of spirit of wine and brushing over the wood with tincture, until the stain appears to be as strong as desired. The Treatise advocated the purchase of a wide selection of colours from druggist’s premises, or at that time from colour shops. Gray would eventually import all of her pigments from China. The colours which were popular in the manual included ivory black, lampblack, verdigris, umber, indigo or yellow ochre. The manual advocated the use of only the best varnish which also could be used for varnishing light colours such as white, yellow, green, sky, red, silver or gilded. A black ground was advocated, though grounds could also be, though rarely, white which in the seventeenth century imitated porcelain.
4.4 Lacquer samples, 1910s, wood, pigment, lacquer © NMI
Red lacquer was popular in the seventeenth century and Gray would avidly use it in her screens such as Le Destin (The Destiny) and domestic ware, placing it into a contemporary context. The technique as advocated in the Treatise consisted of applying coats of heavily pigmented coloured varnish that was initially blended with oil resin formulation, also known as spirit varnish, such as turpentine or essential oil, or with dissolved resin, such as seedlac, sandarac, copal, gum elemi, mastic, Venetian turpentine, gamboge or dragon’s blood. Each layer had to be polished and allowed to dry before applying the next coat of varnish. Successive coats had to contain less and less pigment. The last coats required the application of a final white or clear varnish.
The book also provided several sets of prints mainly flora and fauna designs where amateurs could incorporate or copy the patterns or simply cut them out and paste them on the surface of a Japanned object. Advice was given on how to add colour to these cut-out patterns using gold paint. There is one example which serves as the model for painting an exotic bird with a lustrous plumage and the authors instruct the reader on how to make the Japanned pattern shine with various shades of black, silver, gold and brown. To add extra brilliance to compositions, it was recommended to add speckles of gold on the designs, however, the reader was warned to use temperance and measure, to resist the temptation of creating absurd Chinoiserie compositions. Gray added these gold speckles on the bowls and plates of her domestic lacquer ware, albeit it in an extremely abstract and minimalist manner.
For Gray to expand her fine art skills into the medium of lacquer was not unusual. In England since the seventeenth century it was considered a natural progression in the arts. In the realm of female accomplishments painting was one of the master arts, and Japanning manuals such as the Treatise urged for a sound arrangement of designs.9 Lacquer was a sensuous material, engaging the craftsman’s hands, yet it was also an arduous craft. Upon her return to Paris in 1907 she took samples of the work with her and, through Charles’s contacts, was introduced to her lacquer mentor Seizo Sugawara (1884-1937), a young Japanese student in his twenties. Gray plunged into a medium that was unconventional and not widely used at all in Paris other than for restoration work. Gray in later years said that the French were suspicious of lacquer because it was too black, too dark and related to the dark arts.10 Despite lacquer being a difficult medium of expression it captured her imagination, challenging her and intriguing her. It was a very demanding process that required determination, dedication and hard work. She kept Charles’s recipe for lacquer, but Charles used Chinese lacquer which she imported and ordered from him in London but gradually through the influence of Sugawara she changed around to Japanese lacquer which she stated ‘The Chinese lacquer has more oil in it and is less resistant than the Japanese one, which is harder’.11 Gray began ordering directly from a Japanese lacquer merchant Sugimoto Gosuke from Toyko.12
4.5 Seizo Sugawara, 1910s, black and white photograph © NMI
Following trips to Ireland and England, Gray finally settled permanently in Paris at the end of 1906 and took an apartment at 21 rue Bonaparte in 1907. During this period the world of the decorative arts in France was in disarray. The rapid development of the German avant-garde design movement, exhibited at the Exposition Universelle, posed a threat to French design. In 1910 the Munich Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk held their first Paris exhibition at the Salon d’Automne. Largely employing wood, their simple designs were socially motivated, produced for moderate household budgets and addressed questions of industrial production.13 The German approach inspired a number of French designers, including Francis Jourdain (1876-1958) and Claude Roger Marx (1888-1977), who believed that, based on the example of Germany and England, one could produce low-cost affordable furniture for the masses. Gray embraced this liberal social philosophy. The Germans posed a threat suggesting a practical, democratic non-historicist approach, whereas the French by not embracing mass production hid behind the veneer of sumptuous interiors and outdated elitism. Indeed on 29 March the French newspaper Le Matin proclaimed that the French decorative arts were endangered by an imminent German invasion and as a result French critics assumed a defensive position.14 Gray felt an immediate affinity with their ideas.
In 1901 the Société Nationale des Artistes Décorateurs, a non-profit organisation, had been formed in France. Its aim was to promote French decorative arts, encouraging artists, craftsmen and designers to break from industrialists and work directly for the public under their own signature. They were insistent on elevating the status of the designer to the same level as that of artist. Gray joined and exhibited with them until 1925. Despite promoting modernity, French decorative arts relied heavily on luxury goods for an elitist clientele and did not consider changing to mass production. In France the emphasis on a nationalist approach to the decorative arts overlooked the developments of the Munich Werkstätten, and in the vacuum left from Art Nouveau there was a revival of eighteenth and nineteenth-century styles with garlands, swags and bouquet motifs and neo-classical references. This, combined with the charms of Orientalism and the exoticism of Les Ballet Russes and Diaghilev’s production of Schéhérazade in 1909, produced the repertoire of Art Deco which culminated in the 1925 Exposition des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes.
With the initial help of Seizo Sugawara Gray was provided with further instruction, and the two remained as friends and in partnership for many years. They shared the same tools and workboxes, one of the tools even had the initials ‘G’ and ‘S’. Gray also kept Sugawara’s cabinet, his professional stamp and she kept a piece of his lacquer for herself.15 Sugawara was born in Sakata city in Yamagata Prefecture in North West Honshu on 29 January 1884.16 His early training was with a maker of Butsudan – traditional Buddhist shrines made in lacquer. He was apprenticed from an early age to a shrine maker in Jahoji.17 In 1905, at the age of twenty-one he was chosen to accompany Shoka Tsujimura (1867-1929) a professor in lacquer from the École des Beaux-Arts Tokyo to Paris.18 Tsujimura had been invited by the French government to teach the art of lacquer.19 Seizo Sugawara was one of Eileen Gray’s early lacquer teachers, but the exact date as to when they met still remains unclear.20
