528 Indochine
This swivel armchair is a
re-working of the LC7, whose frame was in tubular metal, and was the work of
Charlotte Perriand in 1927. It was later exhibited along with other furniture
that Perriand co-designed with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret for the 1929
Salon d’Automne in Paris. The original design was executed in Vietnam in 1943,
using the materials and crafts techniques available during that war-time
period. The first model had three legs, with a fourth added later. This piece
reflects the designer’s flexible and resourceful approach: she often adapted
her designs according to the availability of materials and where production was
to take place. Cassina has re-issued Indochine in the full respect of the
original design, interpreting it, and incorporating a solid wood base that
highlights the excellence of the company craftsmen’s wood-working skills.
About Designer | |
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Charlotte Perriand |
Charlotte Perriand full membership of that avant-garde
cultural movement which, from the first decades of the twentieth century,
brought about a profound change in aesthetic values and gave birth to a truly
modern sensitivity towards everyday life. In this context, her specific
contribution focuses on interior composition, conceived as creating a new way
of living, still today at the heart of contemporary lifestyle. In the sphere of twentieth century furnishing history,
the advent of modernity made possible the entrepreneurial audacity of this true
reformer of interior design. At the beginning of her professional career she
was acclaimed by critics for her Bar under the roof, exhibited at the Salon d’Automne
in 1927 and constructed entirely in nickel-plated copper and anodized
aluminium. In the same year, when she was just twenty-four years old, she began
a decade-long collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, at the
famous design studios at 35, rue de Sèvres in Paris. Her presence in the Le Corbusier studio is visible in
all the furnishings designed with him and with Pierre Jeanneret: and so
Charlotte Perriand becomes a cornerstone in the reformation project promoted by
the architect, adding a distinct dimension of humaneness to the often cold
rationalism of Le Corbusier. In her creations she manages to animate the
fundamental substance of daily life with new aesthetic values: in particular
her talent and intuition in the discovery and use of new materials manifest
themselves to their full extent. The ten-year long collaboration with Le Corbusier and
Pierre Jeanneret, and her Japanese experience, represent periods of intense
creative effervescence in the life of the artist. During her long stay in the
Far East (‘40-‘46), she reveals her artistic talent to the full, through a
reinterpretation of the reality of life to echo both tradition and modernity.
By way of example, worthy of mention are the furnishings produced using
traditional bamboo processing techniques, capable of enhancing the new forms
already experimented using steel-tubing. After her work as a professional, she concentrates on
a series of original and balanced productions, commissioned by top-level
authorities and leading companies of the calibre of Air France, and by a number
of foreign organizations, authenticating the fame she had by now gained on the
international scene.
The distinguishing factor of Charlotte Perriand’s
personality is a sincere loyalty to the principles of humane and innovative
rationalism, preserved intact in her projects, on which she worked with such
passion, also in readiness for their revival in the “Cassina I Maestri”
collection. |