Design Moment: Transat Chair, 1927-30

For her summer house, perched in the cliffs at Roquebrune in Cap Martin in the south of France, Eileen Gray (1878-1976) designed every last detail of the interior. Many of the pieces of furniture made for the ship-like building, which the Irish designer called E1027, have become modern classics including the Transat Chair.

It was the era of glamorous ocean liner travel and Gray took inspiration for her fauteuil transatlantique for the terrace at E1027 from the chairs typically found on deck. Simple structures, they would have had a timber frame supporting a sling-like seat with a cushioned headrest. Filtered through her genius, that chair took a different shape: geometric lacquered wooden side frames with – in a nod to art deco – chrome brackets, supporting a padded leather or fabric sling seat with a pivoting head cushion.

Only 12 were made with nine currently accounted for – one sold for a record-breaking price at Christie’s in New York in June. Complete with its original calfskin upholstery and ebonised frame, it had been discovered in a flea market in the 1980s; it sold under the hammer for €1.4 million. Transat Chairs are reproduced under licence by Aram.