Egg Collective’s Homage to Eileen Gray
The New York design trio showcases the work of two sculptors in a physical and digital re-creation of a never-realized home by the unsung modernist master.
Known for its refined yet expressive furniture and lighting designs, New York-based boutique design company Egg Collective—the combined force of Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis, and Hillary Petrie—has staged the Designing Women group exhibition series in their meticulously appointed Tribeca showroom over the past half decade. Each installment addresses a relevant theme such as motherhood and the lineage between historical and contemporary talents.
For this year’s edition—until June 14—Egg Collective has set its focus on long overlooked early 20th-century polymath Eileen Gray and one of her unrealized projects, The House for Two Sculptors.
“We were looking for a modernist home in which to shoot our work, and were struck by how few examples of female authored architecture we could find from this period,” Beamer says.
“We began to dialogue about what it would look like to digitally build an unrealized work, which took us into the archives of female designers/architects who we admired. Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors jumped out at us because of the programmatic nature of the house being designed for creatives as well as its egg-shaped atelier. It felt to us like a sign.”
Gray’s iconic furniture pieces are better-known in the annals of often gender-skewed design history than her equally epochal work in architecture.
“Eileen was a pioneering designer, paving the way into male-dominated spaces a generation before designers like Charlotte Perriand often thought of as her contemporary,” Ellis explains. “Her work still feels contemporary and continues to influence designers today. So to bring this work to life 90 years after its conception feels like we are paying overdue tribute to a designer never recognized for this work in her lifetime.”
The innovatively designed home has be reconstructed in an interactive virtual display, and imagined vignettes of the space have also been reconstituted throughout the showroom as backdrops for select items from the boutique producer’s own collections, including the new Eileen Mirror, inspired by the talent’s deftly composed textiles.
The Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors will also showcase works by invited artists Taylor Kibby and Molly Haynes. Naturally, the trio’s long-time collaborator, fine art curator Tealia Ellis Ritter, chose to exhibit the work of two Los Angeles-based sculptors.
“Although the original artists for whom the house was designed are unknown, the intent of a space for creative practice and life to mingle was clear. After some discussion, Kibby and Haynes—whose work we have long admired—felt like a good fit,” Petrie says.
“Not only are they friends, their work—although created using very different materials, ceramics versus fibre art—formally references one another’s practice with its use of repetitive forms and processes. This rigorous exploration of form, combined with an appreciation for the simplicity of materials in creation of works that possess both structure and fluidity, felt like a direct connection to Gray’s design ideals.”
