THE INGENIOUS FIXED AND FREE-STANDING FURNITURE

The Villa is small but for Eileen Gray everyone “must be able to remain free and independent” and store everything in a minimum amount of space. For this purpose, she designed elegant, functional and highly ingenious furniture, paying the utmost attention to every detail.

The Villa is small but Eileen believed that everyone should be able to remain ’free and independent’ and store  everything in a minimum amount of space. This concern for order and storage manifests itself in the tiny labels used to designate the place assigned to each item. Her designer drawings specify all the methods she invented to create  sub-spaces and mobile furniture, fixed or inbuilt, accompanying every activity. Certain items of furniture and rugs are designs that were on sale in her Parisian gallery Jean Désert. Examples include the Transat lounger, reminiscent of  those seen on ocean-going liners, the Bibendum armchair, a black-leather, chrome frame sofa, the flying tables, the ’Marine d’abord’ rug in the guest room and the clever circular chrome and bedside table (called the E-1027 table) whose height can be adjusted by a little steel chain.

Other items of furniture are built in such as the bedhead of the little divan in the main room, with its pillow cupboard, its blue bedside lamp and electric sockets. Next to it there is a mobile reading table on a folding metal arm.

In the guest bedroom, a similar device carries the tray inserted into the writing table and with shelves fitted in the wall. In Eileen’s bedroom the tall, narrow mirror cabinet serves as a screen between the wash-basin and the work studio. In a corner, pivoting drawers are superimposed on one another. In the guest room the famous circular wall mirror (“Satellite”) with its articulated arm was patented by Jean Badovici.

Today the items of free-standing furniture in the villa are modern editions made by Aram, and the fixed furniture items have been reconstructed by artisans and experts for Cap Moderne.