Cassina Reconstructs Charlotte Perriand Works for Exhibition
For “Le Monde Nouveau de Charlotte Perriand” (“Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World”), an exhibition opening today at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Cassina—the only company authorized to manufacture furniture by the early 20th-century visionary of modern furniture design—collaborated with Pernette Perriand Barsac to reconstruct some of Perriand’s pioneering works. These include the celebrated Salon d’Automne, the annual art exhibition held at the Grand Palais in Paris, where Perriand, Le Corbusier, and Pierre Jeanneret staged Equipement Interieur d’une Habitation exactly 90 years ago in 1929.
The setting was the three designers’ first public presentation of their tubular metal furniture, critically reviewed at the time for its minimalism but still produced today by Cassina. Cassina, Perriand Barsac, and design historian Arthur Rüegg reconstructed the interiors of the Salon d’Automne for the very first time, creating an immersive experience for visitors. The space has been furnished with armchairs, tables, and chairs that later became the core of Cassina’s LC Collection, but here are produced in the specific colors and materials of the time they were created. Other items, such as the single bed, were specially produced for the exhibition.
Additional reconstructions by Cassina of Perriand’s most influential pieces include her Double Chaise-Longue, shown at the Proposition d’un Synthèse des Arts, a 1955 installation in Tokyo, and the Banquette Meandre, which Perriand prototyped from 1937-1940.
Cassina also loaned to the exhibition its construction of Perriand’s futuristic Refuge Tonneau, a portable mountain shelter she developed in scale model style in 1938 with Jeanneret. Designed to accommodate eight people, it was authentically produced from her sketches in 2012 at Cassina’s headquarters in Meda, Italy.
Perriand, who was born in 1903 and died in 1999, established her modern aesthetic in the 1920s and began her decade-long association with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret at the age of 24. Cassina, founded in 1927, launched industrial design in Italy in the 1950s.
“Le Monde Nouveau de Charlotte Perriand” will run through February 24, 2020.
Read more: Fondation Louis Vuitton to Display 192 Pieces by Charlotte Perriand
