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- Art & Design
Design Hits, Revisited
The business of design is a fickle one—over the course of time, some names become iconic while others fade into obscurity. An A-list of contemporary designers give a shout-out to their favorite people and pieces from the past.
May 2011
Eileen Gray (1878–1976), an outlandish Irish-born aristocrat who
ricocheted from male to female lovers, was proud to be a Parisian
demimondaine between the wars. She also designed many recognizable
pieces—among them the Michelin Man–inspired Bibendum chair—with which
her name is rarely associated. But it’s her Transat armchair from 1927
that wows Paul Silvera, owner of Silvera in Paris. “To create it she had
to entirely rethink the ergonomics of this type of chair,” Silvera says,
“because this was the absolute opposite of that period’s rigorous
geometry.”
May 2011
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