KP Finley

KP Finley. We don’t embroider cushions here. Bauhaus Carpet. Dimensions variable.

KP Finley. All power to you. (Based on Eileen Gray, Rivoli Table, 1928). Steel and wood. Dimensions variable. 2020. Contains Le Corbusier mural that he painted on Gray’s E1027 house between 1938 – 39.

Eileen Gray Vs Le Corbusier

E1027 was the first architectural work of the designer Eileen Gray, completed in 1929 when she was 51 years old. Gray talked of creating “a dwelling as a living organism” serving “the atmosphere required by inner life”. “The poverty of modern architecture,” she said, “stems from the atrophy of sensuality.” She criticised it for its obsession with hygiene: “Hygiene to bore you to death!”

Eileen Gray. E1027. 1929. Roquebrune Cap Martin, France

E1027, which was built for Gray and her lover, Jean Badovici, grows from furniture into a building. She created a number of pieces of loose and built-in furniture for the house and installed others that she had previously designed, always with close attention to their interaction with the senses and the human body. She created a tea trolley with a cork surface, to reduce the rattling of cups, another trolley for taking a gramophone outside, and the E1027 table, whose height can be adjusted to suit different situations

Long after Eileen Gray left the villa in 1932, Le Corbusier spent a few days there in 1937, 1938 and 1939. In April 1938, encouraged by Jean Badovici, he painted two murals in the villa, and returned the following year to paint another five. He said “I am dying to dirty the walls: ten compositions are ready, enough to daub the whole lot”. According to her biographers, Eileen Gray didn’t think much of these paintings. In 1949 Badovici threatened to remove them. Several paintings that had been damaged during the war were restored by Le Corbusier himself in 1949 and again in 1963. Three of them however have disappeared. Those that have been preserved have since been restored or are under restoration.

Reference: https://capmoderne.com/en/lieu/la-villa-e-1027/ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/02/eileen-gray-e1027-villa-cote-dazur-reopens-lost-legend-le-corbusier

Eileen Gray. Rivoli table, 1928

KP Finley. Perfect companion. (Based on Eileen Gray, Rivoli Table, 1928). Steel and wood. Dimensions variable. 2020. Contains Le Corbusier mural that he painted on Gray’s E1027 house between 1938 – 39.