Monday’s Muse: Charlotte Perriand

“… after all, design is about responding to the gestures of the human being. Then there is a side even beyond this, which has to do with a sort of harmony with oneself, with one’s environment; this kind of awareness affects everything.”

–

When the 24 year old Charlotte Perriand walked into Le Corbusier’s studio at 35 rue de Sèvres, in Paris during the late ’20s, asking him to hire her as a furniture designer, his response was, “We don’t embroider cushions here”, and showed her the door. A few months later Le Corbusier was forced to apologise, after being taken by his cousin Pierre Jeanneret to see the glacial Bar sous le Toît, (or rooftop bar), that Charlotte had created for the Salon D’Automne exhibition in Paris. Le Corbusier instantly invited her to join his studio.

In a time when most women were expected to stay at home, the French designer not only demolished the stereotype, she also became one of the most influential furniture designers of the early modern movement. Responsible for introducing the ‘machine age’ aesthetic to interiors, with her works including steel, aluminium and glass materials, she continued to create iconic furniture at Le Corbusier’s architectural studio for over a decade.

Her famous B306 chaise longue and the B302 swivel chair were some of her earlier designs that used her signature tubular chromed steel, but by the late 1930s she began designing in a more rustic style, perhaps inspired by her love of the mountainous region of Savoie, where she had often stayed with her grandparents as a child. She eventually left Le Corbusier’s studio and continued to work with artist Fernand Léger, and then designer Jean Prouvé.

–

{Image above: Between 1960 and 1961 Charlotte Perriand designed and built for herself a small chalet in Meribel les Allues, in France’s Savoy region.}