An American in Paris
Eyre de Lanux
“Art must encapsulate the most tangible relations, the most intimate needs of subjective life” — Eileen Gray
Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux was an extraordinary designer and although relatively little is known of her, her work was something of a bridge between the early pioneering modernism of Eileen Gray (1878-1976) and the rationalism of Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999). (Interestingly, and perhaps worth noting, despite their wildly differing aesthetic styles, one thing all three women have in common is that they were heavily inspired by Japonism.) Born into a well-to-do and well-connected family in 1894 (her uncle Wilson Eyre (1858-1944) was a leading Arts and Crafts architect, and an ancestor had been George Washington’s private secretary) de Lanux was an important figure in the world of twentieth century design — coming across a little like an Art Moderne incarnation of La Belle Dame Sans Merci in memoirs of the time — before largely disappearing from view, ending her days in a Manhattan nursing home in 1996 at the age of 102. Her work was neither poor nor stripped bare, in a similar vein to that of Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941), her architectural interiors of which, unfortunately, there are few, were austere and pared back without ever appearing empty, or lacking in interest (although I’m sure some would disagree, Frank’s signature style was after all known as luxe pauvre). De Lanux clearly had a “less is more” approach to design, yet her experimentation with innovative materials, not previously used in furniture, for e.g. marbled and waxed paper, glass and linoleum were radical, pushing the boundaries of design towards what would become known by the nom de plume of “International Modernism” — indeed much like Frank, de Lanux didn’t subscribe to any particular hierarchy of materials, employing traditional methodologies, but using them in novel ways, for e.g. a floor reading lamp (c. 1928) entirely covered in cork veneer, placed on a circular base bordered in bronze, or a dressing table (c. 1928) sheathed in parchment with amber knobs. In 1918 in Le Coq et l’Arlequin (“The Rooster and the Harlequin”) Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) wrote: “Impressionism had just held its last fireworks display and the end of a long feast. It’s up to us to fill the firecrackers for a new feast … we gently close the eyes of the deceased; now we must also gently open up the eyes of the living.” This was the spirited bohemian world into which de Lanux would propel herself, a design rebel, decades ahead of her time.
A Portrait of Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, wearing an overcoat by artist Sonia Delaunay (1928) by Arnold Genthe
The studio of Evelyn Wyld and Eyre de Lanux, featuring a dressing table sheathed in parchment with coral handles
De Lanux arrived in Paris — which at the time was the epicentre of modern culture — in 1919 after her marriage to the French writer and diplomat Pierre Combret de Lanux (1887-1955) (“We were married in 1918, two days after the war ended,” de Lanux said of their union. “We left at once for Paris, and when we arrived, immediately got the Spanish flu.”); despite something of shock for a young American (it was after all a time of hedonism, cocaine, opium and shots of port wine), Pierre took de Lanux everywhere, immediately introducing her to the cream of artistic and literary circles. Fully embracing her new surroundings she began studying at the Académie Ranson with artists Maurice Denis (1870-1943), Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), Roger de La Fresnaye (1885-1925) and perhaps most important of all, Gino Severini (1883-1966), who, having only recently invented Futurism, was keen to share his theories with up and coming artists. It was also where Demetrius Galanis (1883-1966), Matisse’s engraver, agreed to teach de Lanux his art. Perhaps considering such teaching insufficient, or, more likely, spoilt for choice, she would also enrol at Académie Colarossi (famous at the time for the “affaire” between Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) and Jeanne Hébuterne (1898-1920)) and Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Perhaps a seminal moment in her artistic baptism of fire came when — through her friendship with the poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) — de Lanux met Constantin Brâncusi (1876-1957), who agreed to teach her fresco (a relatively dead technique he was experimenting with in parallel to his sculpture). Though far more important than any technique, de Lanux would assimilate the artist’s asceticism: “Simplicity,” Brâncusi said, “is not the aim in art, but one arrives at it in spite of oneself, by approaching ever more closely the sense of the real in things.” Indeed her experience with the artist had a lasting impact, as can be seen in her designs for furniture and interiors, where she experimented not only with form, but the appearance of surfaces, materiality and colour.
Helen Simpson’s pied-à-terre, rue Git-le-Coeur, paris (1927-1928) by Eyre de Lanux, a painting by Joan Miro, lamo in straw marquetry and armchairs with thin armrests
In France at this stage, the concept of an interior decorator, in the sense as we now understand it, did not exist; and instead there were various furniture workshops and design studios overseen by architects, or cabinet-makers. Since the end of the war, in terms of decorative arts, several schools had coexisted and accordingly, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes 1925 (“International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts”) was conceived so as to provide a complete overview of modern design. The neoclassical designs of Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933), heavily influenced by historicism, competed with a myriad of other traditionalists, for e.g. André Groult (1884-1966), Armand-Albert Rateau (1882-1938) and Paul Iribe (1883-1935), all of whom were inspired by the eighteenth century tradition of fine French cabinetry that had been interrupted by the fussy organic floridity of the Art Nouveau style (of course, to some extent, this historical reverence was holding the French back from fully engaging with modernity). Then there were those truly avant-garde designs, entirely unencumbered by the stylistic baggage of the past, such as those of Marcel Coard (1889-1974), Pierre Legrain (1889-1929) and Eileen Gray (1878-1976) who, at the time, were designing furniture for French fashion designer and art collector Jacques Doucet (1853-1929). These extraordinary works offered a new kind of visual lexicon, taking inspiration from both cubism and traditional African art, the latter of which was, increasingly, a source of interest, as seen at Marius de Zayas’s (1880-1961) 1914 exhibition for Alfred Stieglitz’s (1864-1946) Galerie 291, which was one of the first in which African art was seen in the context of contemporary work.
The runaway success of Elsie De Wolfe’s (1865-1950) 1913 book The House in Good Taste — in which she would notoriously proclaim, “I’m going to make everything around me beautiful — that will be my life” — as well as various articles she wrote between 1909 and 1913 drew attention to what was to become the profession of interior decorator in England and the United States; the French however found it otiose to a country such as there’s where the proverbial cup ranneth over with a veritable smorgasbord of arts and culture. Complete suites of furnishings, such as the interior decoration of the apartment in rue de Lota, for which Madame Mathieu Lévy had given Gray carte blanche were rare exceptions, perceived by the public merely as excess or folly; indeed at the time family’s across the social spectrum tended to live amongst a jumble of heirlooms, passed down through generations, steeped in history and respected as part of a family legacy. Indeed it was only through the work of Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) — a disciple of that patron of modernism Eugenia Errázuriz (1860-1951) — that designers realised, paradoxically, that true luxury might actually be enriched by simplicity; the way in which Frank employed materials such as terracotta, plaster and raw plywood demonstrated how rich, elegant interiors could be created without need for excessive ornamentation and ostentation. As he and de Lanux shared a number of close mutual friends, she was well aware of Frank’s pared back “renunciation aesthetic” (in the words of François Mauriac), and inevitably his work would have had an impact on her approach to interiors.
In 1922 Gray opened a gallery at 217 rue Saint-Honoré in which she sold her folding “Brick” screens (of which, regarding the way in which they eschewed Art Deco’s burly ornamentation, she declared in a 1971 letter to her niece, the artist Prunella Clough, “the screens are a revolt”), as well as small lacquered objects, lamps and rugs that her former companion and associate Evelyn Wyld (1882-1973) wove according to her designs. In desperate need of publicity, gallery director Gabrielle Bloch contacted de Lanux in the hope of obtaining an article in the American press. It was through this connection that de Lanux would meet Wyld, after which the two began an affair and formed a partnership to create an interior design firm. They developed an entirely original decorative style that whilst more austere and masculine than Gray, was more feminine than Frank, whose aesthetic still veered toward the Spartan. Somewhat radical in its conception, there was at the time in France no other interior decoration company belonging only to women. Both de Lanux and Wyld shared similar aesthetic sensibilities and this allowed them to develop a creative language entirely divorced from French tradition, which would to some extent explain their unbridled artistic imagination. Although everyone knew they were a couple, and they found most of their clients in the artistic, and lesbian friendly circles, female couples did not yet enjoy the same tolerances as male couples — as was the case for Cocteau and Frank — and they essentially lived like artists.
A cubist pedestal table by Eyre de Lanux, a perfect example of how her furniture designs were often a pretext for sculptural experimentation, exploring the interplay between solids and voids
The duo exhibited widely in 1928 and 1929 at the Salon des artistes décorateurs (“Artistic Decorators’ Salon”), then at the Salon d’Automne (“Autumn salon”); in 1930 at the Pavillion de Marsan, invited by the Union des Artistes Modernes, then in London at the Curtis Moffat gallery. In tandem they produced designs for five private commissions — of which, sadly, little trace now remains — which allowed them to fully grasp the scope of their combined talents. De Lanux’s interiors were, and still are, compared to Frank’s — and even though she used some of his designs, the overall effect is altogether softer; for e.g. if the floors were stone, she tempered them with rugs, if the curtains were rough woven, she countered it with soft woolen fringes and whilst she sought the light of white, she was careful to balance its Trappist undertones. Yet at the same time there was nothing excessive or ostentatious, and throughout her career de Lanux constantly refined her innate taste for simplicity, at least in part, through her unusual choice of materials. Iribe said that a kitchen table, even if it were made of gold, was still, at the end of the day, just a kitchen table, and de Lanux demonstrated with aplomb that a desk sheathed in linoleum could be as beautiful, if not more so, than one made of ebony.
Most of her objects and products combine unusual pairings of materials, resulting in a transmutation of the ordinary to the sublime. In 1930 fashion journalist and editor Madge Garland (1898-1990) wrote of the apartment de Lanux decorated for Mrs. Forsythe Sherfesee overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg: “Madame de Lanux has a strange and very personal taste in colour combinations which always makes her work interesting and unusual. Terracotta red, white and grey are one blend that goes well together; light tobacco brown, black and white is another. The fine grain of the type of wood, the softness of the leather, the roughness of the hand-woven rugs are used to bring out the best in otherwise banal objects.” Indeed everyday furnishings, tables, chairs, banquettes etc. were often merely a pretext for sculptural experimentation, exploring the interplay between solids and voids; yet still, for de Lanux, the form of a piece of furniture was fundamentally determined by its function, for e.g. a storage piece was treated almost as if a frame for the object it contained.
Still reeling from the 1929 crash, Wyld and de Lanux were forced to close their studio at 17-19 rue Visconti and moved to Cannes where Wyld owned a country house: The Bastide Caillenco. The duo moved their furniture and weaving workshop there and in 1932 opened Décor, a boutique furniture gallery. Unfortunately the French Riviera was already only a shadow of its former self and on December 13, 1933 in a letter to her husband Pierre, de Lanux wrote: “I want a client. Nothing more. Or maybe to change my line of work.” And there it ended; a short but stellar career, and an immeasurable contribution to the visual lexicon of the decorative arts — what Bridget Elliott describes as a hybrid of “primitive” and “modern” aesthetics.