The Irish Times

From late next week in the Collins Barracks premises of the National Museum, it will be possible to see work by two Irish designers who worked contemporaneously but quite differently. From the late 19th century until his death in 1936, James Hicks was undoubtedly the most popular furniture maker in Ireland, his workshops on Dublin's Lower Pembroke Street constantly trying to catch up with abundant orders and the list of his clientele ranging from members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy to the Irish Free State. Eileen Gray, on the other hand, although her period of greatest creativity overlapped with that of Hicks, was scarcely known during those years in Ireland, where she had been born and raised. It was only in her very old age that she received any recognition and only now, more than a quarter century after her death, that an exhibition devoted to Gray will open in this country.