: Even at the present time, the work of French modernist designer
Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) is not well known in the United
States, except to a small group of architectural historians
familiar with the personnel of Le Corbusier's studio. She joined
the atelier of Le Corbusier and his partner/cousin Pierre
Jeanneret in 1927 and helped design a trio of iconic chairs
firmly associated in the public mind with the famous architect.
But this was only one phase of a long career of independent work
punctuated with various artistic collaborations that spanned the
entire Twentieth Century.
Now, editor Mary McLeod, professor of architecture at Columbia
University, has assembled a comprehensive series of essays in the
volume Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living (Abrams 2003),
which examine the progression of the designer's architectural and
decorative style over her intensely productive 96-year lifespan.
In a fortuitous coincidence, the Princeton University Art Museum
is offering a small exhibition, "Useful Forms: Furniture by
Charlotte Perriand," displaying six distinctive pieces of the
designer's furniture from the 1940s and 1950s through July 11.
"I first met Charlotte Perriand in 1979 when I was teaching in
Paris," says McLeod. "The woman with whom I was teaching,
Waltraude Woods, had actually worked with her in the past. At my
colleague's invitation, Perriand spent two long mornings talking
to the Columbia students and she was absolutely fabulous."
