Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table

eileen gray adjustable table is two chrome rings, one the foot (which is partially open) and the other the top (full ring) connected by a chrome tubular steel rectangle that both holds and pierces the top. the top is painted black. being sold by lempertz in may 2025
Eileen Gray’s Eileen Gray Table, being sold as Lot 432 at Lempertz in Cologne, on 15 May 2025

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.

a black and white slightly washed out photo of a modernist bedroom, with a blocky double bed pushed into a corner. a metal screen at the end of the bed gives privacy. a night stand is cantilevered off the wall. a round chrome cantilevered side table that can slide under the edge of the bed is slid under the side of the bed. the image of eileen gray's guest room at e-1027, her house in roquebrune france, was published in a moma catalogue in 1979, where lempertz used it without credit, but no sweat, i found it.
vintage photo of E-1027 Guest Room with an OG Table, probably from Prunella Clough’s Gray Archive, as published in J. Stewart Johnson’s 1979 MoMA catalogue, Eileen Gray: Designer [sic], via Lempertz

“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.