{"id":65555,"date":"2026-10-31T17:49:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hartdesignselection.com\/?p=65555"},"modified":"2026-10-31T18:02:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T17:02:52","slug":"charlotte-perriand-life-work-and-iconic-furniture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hartdesignselection.com\/en\/charlotte-perriand-life-work-and-iconic-furniture\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Perriand: life, work and iconic furniture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In October 1927, a twenty-four-year-old woman walked into Le Corbusier’s studio on the rue de S\u00e8vres with a portfolio under her arm. The architect sent her away with a line that became famous: “We don’t embroider cushions here.” A few weeks later, at the Salon d’Automne, he saw the “Bar sous le toit” she had designed in aluminium, glass and chrome-plated steel. He changed his mind and hired her to take charge of furniture. Her name was Charlotte Perriand, and she would spend the next seventy years inventing the way we live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her name is often tied to Le Corbusier’s, like a secondary signature at the foot of the famous chaise longue. That is deeply unfair. Perriand built a vast and coherent body of work, from the metal of the 1920s to wood and bamboo, from Japan to the ski slopes of Savoie. For anyone who loves interiors, she may be the most relevant designer of the whole 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A young woman who refused decoration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Charlotte Perriand was born in Paris on 24 October 1903, to a tailor father and a seamstress mother. Her taste for things well made came from there. On a scholarship, she entered the \u00c9cole de l’Union centrale des arts d\u00e9coratifs in 1920 and studied furniture design until 1925. She shone there, but soon felt stifled by the aesthetics of the day: precious woods, marquetry, crowded interiors, all the refinement of Art Deco<\/a> that she already considered outdated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What fascinated her were machines, cars, speed, modern life. She wore her hair short and a necklace of large chrome-plated metal balls, like a manifesto. To her, a house should work as well as a car, and furniture should follow the body rather than flatter the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years with Le Corbusier<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Having joined the studio at the end of 1927, Perriand took charge of interior equipment alongside Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. In 1928 the trio presented a series of tubular steel seats that would become icons: the sling-back armchair, the swivel chair, the Grand Confort armchair and above all the reclining chaise longue. A photograph from 1928 shows Perriand lying on it, her face turned to the wall, as if stepping back behind the object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"LC4
The LC4 chaise longue, designed in 1928 with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. Photo: Tim Evanson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The division of roles long remained blurred, and history first remembered only the name of Le Corbusier<\/a>. We now know that Perriand played a decisive part in designing and developing these seats, in line with the tubular steel being explored at the same time at the Bauhaus<\/a>. These models are now produced as the LC1, LC2 and LC4, with all three names on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tubular
The 1928 swivel chair, in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo: 14GTR<\/a>, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n \n \n
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