Eileen Gray’s e.1027 house, 1929 _ (before renovation) _ Roquebrune- Cap-Martin _ France

text by PETER LYLE photography by OLIVIER AMSELLEM   The great Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray spent her life creating for the now; when she died in 1976 at the age of 98, she was enthusiastically working on a new kind of table. From first to last, Gray had been concerned with making beautiful and useful things for real people, rather than constructing monuments to her own excellence. She’d devoted her working days to mastering difficult materials and rarefied techniques, such as Japanese urushi lacquering. But Gray’s lack of interest in promoting her reputation during her lifetime almost led to her work and life disappearing from view after her death. For years, she was remembered only by a select group of design aficionados. That all changed when one of her Dragon Chairs sold for €21 million at a 2009 auction of Yves Saint Laurent’s personal collection, a record for a…