Irish born Eileen Gray is one of the most influential figures in modern design. Born in 1878 in Wexford, she was an artist, a furniture designer, an architect, a photographer and early in her career, a shopkeeper in Paris. She worked on several projects, always experimenting with new materials right up to her death in Paris in 1976.
The adjustable table is one of her most famous pieces – although she was so prolific across so many disciplines a Gray piece could feature in this column every week. The table first appeared in photographs of E.1027, a house she designed in the south of France. The thought behind the table is typical of Gray’s design philosophy – it is multipurpose and adjustable (the top lowers so it could be used as a knee-height table), portable so it could be moved from room to room and it could be used as a breakfast table, a bedside table or the perfect end table. It works just as well in a bathroom as in the most formal living room, perfect alongside either contemporary furniture or older classical pieces. Now typically available in chromium plated tubular steel with clear or tinted polished glass – it is produced under licence by Aram.
According to Jennifer Goff in her wonderful and definitive book on the designer “Eileen Gray: Her Work and Her World” (Irish Academic Press) six of her original tables survive, each with different tops and with different dimensions – a testament to her inventiveness. Gray kept the first version of the table all her life, re-chroming it and replacing the original Plexiglass top with a metallic one in the 1970s. Gray was not much recognised in the country of her birth during her lifetime, although there was one significant, though small, exhibition of her work in Dublin in 1973 and it included the Adjustable table. There is a small exhibition of her work in the National Museum at Collins Barracks.
