Eileen Gray was one of the first women to be admitted to the Slade in 1898, where she took up painting before undergoing an apprenticeship in a London lacquer workshop.
Upon moving to Paris in 1902 she gained further experience in lacquer work and cabinet making, quickly establishing herself as one of the leading designers of the lacquered screens and decorative panels key to Art Deco interiors.
In 1922 she opened her own gallery, Jean Désert, in Rue du Fauborg Saint Honoré as an outlet for her designs. In the following decades she became one of the leading exponents, alongside Le Corbusier and J.J.P. Oud, of revolutionary new theories of design and construction. Well to the fore of the group she exhibited chrome, steel tube and glass furniture in 1925 - the same year as Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer and well before Le Corbusier.