greg.org

I don’t know how I can be thirty years and a week into a fairly fervent admiration of Eileen Gray and only be finding out now that her original mailbox at E-1027 was made out of an Hermès saddle bag. And that in 2018 Hermès made a replacement, which I must have walked past multiple times, without knowing—was it actually even there? Yes, there it is in Iwan Baan’s photo.

And there it is in Manuel Bougot’s photograph of the entrance of E-1027, a print of which he donated to the 2019 Artcurial auction to benefit the Association Cap Moderne, which led the restoration of E-1027. The auction that included an overnight stay for two in the E-1027 guest room, but who cares? Because the Hermès “boîte aux lettres unique“ was not, in fact unique; it was “Faite main et sur mesure par la Sellerie Hermès en deux exemplaires en 2018, une pour la Villa E1027, une pour vous.”

Pour moi? Mais, non! Because I did not know. Also I did not bid €11,000 for it.

But now I have une question. Because the English auction listing said this is “replicating precisely the one made by Eileen Gray from a Hermès saddle-bag in 1929 for E1027,” while the French text says it was made from “à partir d’une selle Hermès,” which, I understand selle to be a saddle. So far I can find no info about the original mailbox at all, much less what Hermès product Gray might have chopped up to make it.

The c. 1929 photo of the boîte published in Jean Badovici’s own architecture magazine does indeed look just like the Hermès replica. According to Peter Adam, Gray put the hole in the box and a mirror in the window so you could check the mail from bed. But my limited mind cannot conceive how it is reworked from a bag, and not just made to Gray’s design from saddle leather. Does the original still exist to have been replicated? Are there some archives that need diving into to solve this mystery? Because now that I know it existed, I can’t figure out why, at this point, it’s not a mailbox, a bag, or both..

If you put the phrase, “Important Headboard” in the subject line, you will absolutely have my attention. And if it involves Eileen Gray, and it’s her own furniture, and there turns out to be some specific photodocumentation, all the better.

And so, while digging around on Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table last week, I came across Eileen Gray’s Important Headboard and Wall-Mounted Bookcase AND Eileen Gray’s Important Cabinet. Both were from Gray’s own apartment in Paris, at 21 rue Bonaparte.

These are not fine cabinetry made by the ebenistes to Versailles. They’re painted wood. But while Gray did design some extremely refined pieces on commission, or for her store, Jean Desert, the furniture Gray was making for herself around 1930 all looked like this: utilitarian to an extreme.

The cabinet’s pivoting drawers, and the headboard’s built-in switches and cantilevered nightstand are all features of furniture Gray made at E-1027. The cantilevered night table actually looks identical to the one she put on a divan in Jean Badovici’s studio apartment in Paris in 1930. So she was working from a repertoire of ideas—and parts.

Part of me was bummed that these two pieces were split up when they came up for sale in 2023, though the headboard does seem pretty specific. And they had been on different, intersecting paths since leaving rue Bonaparte. But then I think the screen in the window of Gray’s apartment, which I think was in the MoMA show, seems to have already gone its separate way, too; so maybe it’s too much energy to worry about keeping the ensemble together. I would absolutely love to see someone spend $250-450,000 on these two pieces, though, and make the sickest, authentic monastery cell on the Left Bank, just fueled by IYKYK energy. Even Eileen Gray knew not everything had to be eighteen coats of hand-pumiced lacquer.

Brooklyn woodworker Joel blogged about seeing the Gray furniture at Christie’s, saying: “The pieces are very practical, made out of very prosaic materials, and are pretty poorly made. Exactly what a practical designer living on a budget might want for herself! For me they seem right out of Ikea, albeit with maybe a few more curves. And that idea is way advanced for it’s time.” Metaphorical curves, maybe, and not really on a budget, but yeah, Gray was doing this before Ingvar Kamprad was even a Nazi, much less a furniture titan.

I take back what I said about the hand-pumiced lacquer. Earlier in 2023 Sotheby’s sold an Important Pair of Screens, also from Gray’s apartment, from an Important New York Collection. By the 70s she’d remodeled, settling into her all-lacquer phase, with a Transat Chair, and what looks, ngl, like a very precarious rolling stool and step situation. We should be amazed she lived so long and so well. So did she put the Important Headboard in storage, or did someone buy her used furniture along the way?

Anyway, now I want to find out about the Not Important Enough To Have A Credit Or Any Info Online About It Painting above her bed, which looks like a throwback to her E-1027 days.

OK, have a seat, and pull up a table. The Cologne auction specialists at Lempertz are calling this, “An incunabulum of early 20th century design history,” and a “‘table ajustable’ for E.1027 from the personal collection of Eileen Gray.” The dates are 1925-28. The dates for E-1027 are 1926-29.

“Incunabulum,” of course, is a rare book term for the earliest printed books, before printing presses actually took off. So the implication here, is this is an ur-table of some kind. After all, this table has a black lacquered plywood top. And even the OG E-1027 table ajustable, in E-1027, in the guest room, which was designed for Gray’s sister to have breakfast in bed, had a glass top.

“For E-1027” is not necessarily the same thing as “from E-1027.” The original furniture for E-1027 was sold off while the house itself languished, but Gray’s foundational modernist designs were recognized and canonized during her lifetime. MoMA dates the E-1027 Table to 1927. Their example was fabricated in 1976, the year of Gray’s death, and has a dark glass top on sheet steel. [I think. Maybe someone can doublecheck? It’s on view rn in the David Geffen Wing.]

This table has an Eileen Gray mark on the underside. It was put there—and on the rest of his collection—by Gray champion/biographer Peter Adam. Turns out Adams’ heirs put the table up for sale at Sotheby’s Paris in May 2021, where it was described as a “prototype.” Adam bought it from Gray’s neice, Prunella Clough, who inherited it from Gray. The date for the table then was “vers 1970.” Was it a prototype for a variant with a plywood top? Did it break? Had it been broken for years in the garage, and she was like, “I’m 92; just put a plywood top on it”?

It is all a marvelous mystery, because the auction specialists at Lempertz have provided absolutely no information. While I have blogged myself out of excitement about this table’s history, I am very excited to watch Eileen Gray’s table that didn’t sell four years ago for EUR40,000 sell next month for EUR150-200,000.