Charlotte Perriand

1903-1999

Together with Jean Prouvé, Mathieu Matégot, Jacques Adnet and Jean Royère, Charlotte Perriand is considered as one of the most accomplished furniture creators of the fifties. She collaborated for a period with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret  and designed several pieces of metal furniture from 1927 – such as the famous adjustable «B306» chaise-longue which was produced by Thonet two years later.
Freed from conventional aesthetics, Charlotte Perriand focused her attention on wood work where she found inspiration following her four year stay in Japan – straw, bamboo, tree branches became her favorite materials: with various combinations resulting from these. She only kept the essential volumes and ultimately distanced herself from the functionalist logic. It’s mainly after the second world war that Charlotte Perriand elaborated a new housing concept giving a human dimension to her pieces; through a free use of  materials and her intimate connection with nature, she imposed a pure and powerful style through an art of living.

Keeping in mind and aware of the economic and social realities, she opted for a serial production, elaborating a synthesis between tradition and industry.  In 1949, she created numerous interiors such as the lodgings in the l’Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, with Le Corbusier and also in 1953, the student housings at the Cité Universitaire de Paris, in which an important element is a bookcase created in collaboration with Jean Prouvé.

Throughout her career, Charlotte Perriand was profoundly attached to providing and maintaining a quality of life, be it working class houses, urban or rustic dwellings, to mountain shelters or hotels. She wanted to protect the man and his environment by creating comfortable and functional furniture.

Creator's artwork

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