Space-Age Charlotte Perriand Doors Up for Auction

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Courtesy Design Museum, London

Perriand in 1928, lying upon the tubular-steel chaise longue she… Read More Perriand in 1928, lying upon the tubular-steel chaise longue she designed with Edouard Jeanneret and Le Corbusier

Courtesy Christie’s

A pine console from the Hôtel de Doron, Méribel-Les… Read More A pine console from the Hôtel de Doron, Méribel-Les-Allues, France, 1948

Courtesy Rago Arts

Charlotte Perriand. Four doors, France, 1960s. Gel-coated fiberg… Read More Charlotte Perriand. Four doors, France, 1960s. Gel-coated fiberglass, chromed metal hardware. Unmarked. 77" x 28-1/2" x 2-1/2". Provenance: Alpine Station des Arcs, Savoie, France.

Courtesy Office de Tourisme, Bourg Saint Maurice / Les Arcs

La Cascade, 1969, a residential building at Arcs 1600 designed b… Read More La Cascade, 1969, a residential building at Arcs 1600 designed by Charlotte Perriand and Guy Rey-Millet. Each of the developments at Les Arcs is named according to its altitude.

Courtesy LesArcs.Blog

Courtesy Centre Pompidou

The kitchen unit as installed in an apartment at Arcs 1800

I’ve always thought of Charlotte Perriand’s work as falling into two distinct phases: the heavy-metal, industrial designs prior to World War II, when she famously worked in collaboration with Edouard Jeanneret and Le Corbusier on the B306/LC4 Chaise and other iconic furniture, and the more naturalistic, craftsmanlike pieces of heavy, carved wood she produced after living in Japan and Vietnam during the war.

So a suite of doors up for auction at Rago Arts in New Jersey took me by surprise, with their space-age nacreous finish. It’s a Perriand completely unfamiliar to me, seemingly lifted straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even Barbarella. How do these doors of gel-coated fiberglass fit in with all that rustic pine?

I did a little research into the provenance of the doors, which Perriand designed for Les Arcs, a ski resort in the French Alps. The giant complex was built in phases starting in 1968 (the year both 2001 and Barbarella were released, coincidentally), and Perriand had a heavy hand in the development from the outset.

The images I found online show an amazing, unorthodox blend of the rusticism one would expect of both late-period Perriand and any Alpine ski lodge, with a dash of the plastic-fantastic sensibility of the era. Perriand never relinquished her interest in industry; it simply evolved with technology from steel to synthetics.