Charlotte Perriand

Charlotte Perriand was one of great designers of the twentieth century. A pioneer of modernism, her work was often overshadowed by her more famous male collaborators, who included Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Jean Prouvé. However, in recent years her reputation as a furniture designer and architect has matched the stature of her peers – her furniture in particular has become highly prized by collectors. From the 1920s onwards, Perriand was instrumental in bringing the modernist aesthetic to interiors. But she also believed in the synthesis of the arts, and was friends with visual artists such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. This book will explore Perriand’s journey from the machine aesthetic to her adoption of natural forms, and from modular furniture systems to major architectural projects such as Les Arcs ski resort. Featuring some of her most famous interiors, as well as her original furniture, her photography and her personal notebooks, this book sheds new light on Perriand’s creative process and her place in design history. It will accompany the forthcoming Design Museum exhibition of the same title, which will coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Perriand’s last significant presentation in London, held at the Design Museum in 1996.

Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian. Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art, he has been Director of the Museum of Arts and Design, Head of Research at the V&A and Curator at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee. Jacques Barsac is a writer and documentary maker with a focus on visual arts and design. He co-curated the exhibition Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2019. Tim Benton is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Open University and has been visiting Professor at the Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Columbia University. His research interests are in the field of history of modern architecture and design. He is currently directing a series of three volumes of all the texts, drafts, drawings and critiques of Le Corbusier’s lectures for the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. Sébastien Cherruet is an art historian and curator. Working at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, he recently co-curated the exhibition Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World. Jane Hall (Assemble) is a founding member of Assemble (a London-based, Turner Prize-winning collective) as well as a writer and researcher. She was the inaugural recipient of the British Council’s Lina Bo Bardi fellowship in 2013. Justin McGuirk (ed.) is a writer and curator based in London. He is the chief curator at the Design Museum and the founder of Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven. He has been the director of Strelka Press, the design critic of The Guardian, and the editor of Icon magazine. Pernette Perriand-Barsac, daughter of Charlotte Perriand, manages the Charlotte Perriand Archives and has been a main advisor for works and exhibitions on Charlotte Perriand. She also co-curated the recent Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2019. Penny Sparke is a writer and academic specialising in the history of design. She has been Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London, since 1999, where she is also Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre.