The music by Peter Scherer, and music design by Daniel Hobi, play an important role in the film E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea; play an important role in enabling Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub's film to allow us all to approach the differentiated and more probable appreciation of Eileen Gray E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea admonishes we all need must approach. But can exploring Eileen Gray via music also allow one to approach that differentiated and more
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"J'ai toujours aimé l'architecture. Plus que tout" reflected Eileen Gray in 1973, 'I've always loved architecture. More than anything", continuing, 'but I didn't think I was capable of it'.1 A capability her first major project, the villa E.1027 at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on France's Côte d’Azur, tended and tends to underscore she needn't have doubted. If a capability that over the decades has oft been as concealed and inaccessible as E.1027. With the film E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by
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Paris An Île; A Commune; A Context For all that the contemporary island of Paris has a long tradition of furniture production and usage, the greater part of that history, as can be read in the Bossu de Notre Dame, the oldest relic and most reliable witness of Paris, is one of either extreme decadence and frivolous ostentation, or of extreme poverty and destructive corruption. The (hi)story furniture of Paris very much reflecting the (hi)story of the island. And the (hi)story of its hotels.
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Alongside the Chinese and Korean New Year celebrations one of the most popular observances in any given February is, arguably, the Feast Day of Saint Valentine on February 14th; St Valentine famously being the patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, lovers, but less famously, if just as importantly, also offering protection from the plague. Now while the misanthropes amongst you will query whether love and plague aren't synonyms, and a pox upon you for that; this February 14th we could
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In these dispatches we once doubted the prevalence of designer furniture in comics, noting and acknowledging the regular appearance of popular furniture designs in other visual media, we, off-handedly, opined, "... Designer furniture in a comic?" Elegantly proving us very, very wrong the Vitra Design Museum's exhibition Living in a Box. Design and Comics not only explores the use and depiction of designer furniture and lighting in comics, but also considers how comics have contributed to and
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As previously noted in these pages the (hi)story of modernism is largely one of successful male/female partnerships, the most famous questionably being Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich or Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand in the main period of inter-war European modernism and Charles and Ray Eames in context of the post-war American adaptation. Yet it is also a (hi)story with only very few identifiable female leads. From the examples above Lilly Reich, Charlotte Perriand and Ray
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IMM Cologne kept us busy into February, but the month also saw the opening of an Eileen Gray retrospective in Paris, a visit to the Louis Kahn exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum and the sad passing of James Irvine....
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From February 20th until May 20th 2013 the Centre Pompidou Paris is presenting a major retrospective devoted to the Irish artist, designer and architect Eileen Gray. As someone who once claimed "The future projects light, the past only clouds" we're not 100% certain the subject herself would approve; however, for us it is a welcome and long overdue Eileen Gray retrospective, and fittingly one being staged in the city that more than any other influenced and defined her life, character and
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Perhaps best known for her numerous co-operations with Le Corbusier, the Parisian architect and designer Charlotte Perriand played an instrumental role in developing the European modern movement: Not least as Charlotte Perriand is credited with converting Le Corbusiers modern furniture ideas into reality and so establishing the tradition of minimal, bent chrome steel tube and leather furniture. Among the most famous of these collaborations are the from Cassina produced LC4 Chaise Longue, LC2
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On Wednesday a tweet fluttered into our (smow)twitter from @imm_cologne with the information that the Munich based producer ClassiCon had decided to return to IMM Cologne. Which in the wake of the shock we received on our first day here in Köln didn't go unnoticed among the thousands of invites to cocktail parties and sumptuous buffets at some of Cologne's finer addresses we're forced to deal with. Established in 1990 from the dying embers of the 1898 established "Vereinigte Werkstätten für
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Twas the month before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Save for a company from South Tirol, In hopes that unwary Christmas shoppers would buy their illegal unlicensed copies of Bauhaus classics In a lesser known version of his 1822 classic “A Visit from St. Nicholas", Clement Clarke Moore eerily predicted events some 180 years later whereby, as part of a Christmas sales promotion, a "known" producer of unlicensed copies of Bauhaus classics
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We're just a touch late with this one, but since July 22nd the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin has been showing the exhibition "Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model". For the first time, the three German Bauhaus institutions - Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar - are uniting to present a comprehensive Bauhaus retrospective. “Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model” recounts the story of the Bauhaus in a comprehensive presentation of the works of its
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It's Dumfries Show on Saturday. That won't mean much to the most people, but for us it is a sure sign. Winter is coming. We know, we know. Barely have we got use to remembering to take our sunglasses to work, buying ice-creams for lunch or waking up at 5 am because we forgot to shut the curtains - again - than the Dumfries Agricultural Society hold their annual show. And after the Dumfries show the evenings get shorter with increasing rapidity and before you know it the ground will be brown
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As we stood looking at some mighty fine, but horribly over-carved, wooden furniture at the Salone in Milan a female colleague confided in us that all she needs is some leather straps and a few bits of bent metal. Trying not to show our horror at this outburst of candour, we asked if she had a meeting with El Presidente that evening. "No, no" replied our erstwhile colleague, "Bauhaus. That's my idea of good design" Eileen Gray (1878 -1976) We recite this tale here principally to amuse
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