Incollect Magazine - Issue 8

Incollect Magazine 103 Jean Prouvé “Flavigny” daybed with swivelling tablet designed by Charlotte Perriand. Black lacquered metal frame, wood, oak tablet, black canvas- covered cushion. France, circa 1950s. From Goldwood by Boris on Incollect.com furnishings. Le Corbusier was a brilliant and forward-thinking figure in 20th-century French design, credited with embracing technology and machine-age materials. Today his designs are modern classics, including his chromed tubular steel LC4 chaise lounge, his LC1 and LC2 chairs, and his LC3 armchair and sofa designs. Scholars have since determined that it was actually Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret who came up with many of the designs for furniture attributed to Le Corbusier, or at least the designs were made as part of a collaboration. Perriand went to work in his offices in 1927, at the age of 24, and brought new ideas and a nascent vision of the needs of everyday people in an emerging modern world. Her designs for Le Corbusier are characterized by elemental forms made of industrial materials. Later she was to shift her design focus somewhat and embrace nature and natural materials, inspired by Japanese aesthetics following an invitation to travel to Japan in 1940. Jeanneret is one of the most popular and collectible designers of the modern movement in France. He was a Swiss architect, like his cousin Le Corbusier and the two began an architecture practice in Paris in 1922. Together they designed numerous modern architectural icons, the most famous being the plan and much of the built architecture for the utopian new town of Chandigarh, India. He designed furniture for Chandigarh as well, like his iconic 1950s ‘Office’ chair for the administrative buildings of