Eileen Gray’s Important Bedroom Furniture

a black and white photo of eileen grey's paris bedroom circa 1930, with a cabinet serving as a low wall, with the door behind it, and a chair an vanity situation in front of a wall mounted mirror, and then a low headboard with some lights and switches built in, and a fur throw on the bed. a translucent screen stands in front of the large window on the left background of the photo — Important Cabinet and Headboard in Eileen Gray’s Paris apartment, circa 1930? if Pinterest is to be trusted, and frankly, half the reason for this blog post is to make sure there’s another non-Pinterest version of this photo out there.

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.

a white painted wood headboard of flat, modernist design is set into a corner, and along the adjacent wall is a lattice of interlocking open rectangles forming a series of shelves. a built-in light, some switches, and a cantilevered pivoting nightstand table are all elements eileen grey used elsewhere at the same time, circa 1930. image via christies, where, let's be real, an old painted piece of plywood headboard with cloudy plastic covers on the lights, and pitted nickel plating, is a hard sell for six figures, even if it is important

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.

an eileen grey cabinet of white painted wood has three grey drawers on the top left that pivot out, above a cupboard, and on the right, another cupboard over a couple of open shelves backed with glass or something, circa 1930, image via christies

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.

a photo of a daybed in the corner of a modernist interior circa 1929, with a flat pulldown desk opening on top of a pillow, and a cantilevered night stand that now kind of resembles an airplane seat tray when there's not a seat in front of you. this alcove is really just a corner, there's a door right there. it's eileen gray's living room at e-1027 via moma — photo of E-1027 sleeping alcove in the living room with switch panel and cantilevered night table, from MoMA’s 1980 Eileen Gray exhibition catalogue

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.

1979 moma installation shot in black and white of eileen gray's four panel translucent fluted glass screen—or is it painted metal mesh?—standing on a pedestal behind a small night stand sized cabinet painted white, with pivoting drawers. some unreconizable photos or diagrams hang on the wall next to the display. via moma obv — MoMA 1980 installation photo by Mali Olatunji showing, I think, the translucent four-panel screen from Eileen Gray’s apartment, plus a very matchy little cabinet

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.

eileen gray's paris bedroom is pretty plain, dominated by a big peach striped bed, no fancy pillows and no headboard, and two supertall black lacquer frames that reach to the ceiling. a black lacquer sling chair, like a deck chair for a yacht of one, sits in the corner. beyond the screens, a dangerous looking step up to a very narrow platform with a work table and rolling stool, in front of a window covered by straight cream curtains. over the bed on the left wall, a flag sized painting of blue white and yellow horizontal bands is slashed through by two red diagonals that read like pennants on a ship's line. image via sotheby's, which sold the screens for like $800k in 2023 — it’s an Important Headboard or no headboard at all for Eileen Gray. she wanted no unimportant headboards in her Paris apartment image via sothebys

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.