CHARLOTTE PERRIAND (1903-1999)

A LEATHER AND CHROMED-METAL REVOLVING ARMCHAIR, DESIGNED 1927-28

Details

CHARLOTTE PERRIAND (1903-1999)
A Leather and Chromed-Metal Revolving Armchair, designed 1927-28
model no. B302
28½ in. (72.4 cm.) high
paper label Galerie Ulrich Fiedler Cologne

Provenance

With Galerie Ulrich Fiedler, Cologne.

Further details

Although Charlotte Perriand had been working in Le Corbusier's atelier for about a year, in 1928, she presented solo at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, as she had done in the past. It was here, in her Salle à manger, that this iconic chair was first exhibited. This important exhibition, which was met with much acclaim from the press, marked a shift in Perriand's work. With her model dining room, she dispensed with the Deco touches seen in her 'Bar in the Attic,' exhibited the previous year, and firmly embraced an industrial aesthetic and the modernist social objective of creating an environment to suit the new contemporary way of life.

As scholar Derek Ostergard has pointed out, this piece bears clear similarities to the No. 9 bent wood armchair by Thonet (heralded by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret as the essence of machine production). Perriand masterfully reinterpreted the traditional wood form in the modern material, steel, but softened its coldness with well padded elements.

Examples of this armchair are rare; early versions, such as this one, rarer still. The arms on the earliest examples, as can been seen here, break sharply in a cut and welded joint. Later the design was modified to incorporate a seamless curve as opposed to a sharp turn.

Lot Essay

M. McLeod, ed., Charlotte Perriand An Art of Living, New York, 2003, pp. 13, 40-41, 51, 53, 55, 70, 132, 165, 179, 199-200 and 206.

D. Ostergard, ed., Bent Wood and Metal Furniture: 1850-1946, New York, 1987, pp. 278-79.

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