Born Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray on August 1878 in Brownswood nearby Enniscorthy, west Ireland, Eileen Gray is a designer, architect and lacquer artist who pioneered the Modern design movement in the 20th century. Like her colleagues Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Gray’s designs for architecture and furnishings were among the earliest models of modern design and are recognized to be among the finest of our time.

The youngest daughter of the well-to-do Scottish-Irish Gray family, Eileen Gray focused the well-regarded Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury, London in 1898., but transferred shortly after to the Ecole Colarossi and the Academie Julian in Paris when her father passed away in 1900. Gray in the end returned to London in 1905, where during a visit to the Soho district she became captivated with lacquer-work. She later studied lacquerwork under the tutelage of Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese lacquer artist working for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. After which in 1913, Gray finished her very first exposition presenting several of her attractive panels all through the Salon des Artistes D

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