An Irish woman who fell in love with Paris, Eileen Gray (1878-1976) spent most of a long and modest life searching for an aesthetic that was simultaneously modern, functional, and deliciously sophisticated. Her art and design, celebrated in the 1920s for its unexpected use of Japanese lacquer technique, became progressively more radical and pure, tending toward utilitarian forms.

Although Gray was admired by Le Corbusier and his peers, she was largely unknown until the beginning of the 1980s, when her work, reissued and rediscovered, found itself in perfect harmony with contemporary sensibilities.