< nr. 13 >

Transat

by Eileen Gray
Label: Editions Ecart International Products

Year: 1926

The Transat armchair was designed especially for the Villa E1027 at the Côte d'Azur. The Irish born designer Eileen Gray, who took up residence in Paris in 1907, made her name with furniture in Japanese lacquer work, carpets and the use of tubular furniture. Gray embraced the era of machines and searched for new ways of thinking and working. She would rather make furniture for the general public, in series, than the on-of-a-kind pieces with which she began her career.

Encouraged by her friend and, at that time, her lover, the architect Jean Badovici, she decided in 1925 to design her own home. This modern building arose between 1926 and 1929 in the picturesque surroundings of Roquebrune-Cap Martin in the south of France. The L-shaped building was both open and compact in design and Gray’s ode to modern living. To bolster her vision, she also designed almost all the furniture for the house, often using materials such as glass, metal, wood and leather. Like the Transat, an armchair in different versions of the design: natural or dark lacquered wood and with a seat in leather, tan or linen.

The villa still exists, but has been in poor repair for some time. The furniture has disappeared and the house is empty on the inside. Currently the house is in the process of being restored with the help of the French government, de département Alpes Maritimes and the city of Roquebrune-Cap Martin. A romantic fact about E1027 is that a code is given as a name to her home (E for Eileen, 10 for Jean (the tenth letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray).