The holiday season is fast approaching, and when it comes to gift-giving, people usually fall into one of two camps: those who delight in the hunt for the perfect present, and the rest of us. Buying for a design lover – notoriously tricky, given their knack for finding the most elegant solution to everything – can, in fact, be surprisingly rewarding.

Here, we present Wallpaper’s gift guide for the design-minded individual: a considered edit of beautiful objects that marry form and function with effortless ease. Skip the chaos of tinsel-clad shop floors and instead scroll serenely through our curation, a selection guaranteed to charm even the most discerning (or humbug) recipient.

After a little something? Browse our perfect stocking fillers.

The Wallpaper* gift guide for design lovers

With a brazen jewel heist at the Louvre and an array of impressive pyrotechnics closing the Pompidou, 2025’s Paris Art Week (embracing both Art Basel Paris and Design Miami Paris as well as events around the city) has had an electric start. The city is abuzz. The drama is haut.

Time to head over to the Bastille, perhaps, where Galerie Patrick Seguin's ‘Saint Laurent – Charlotte Perriand’ (24 October – 22 November 2025) offers a serene counterpoint. A calming breath of clean lines and fresh air amidst the chaos, here, four rare furniture designs are being reissued under the curatorial direction of Anthony Vaccarello.

Four lesser-known Charlotte Perriand designs

The exhibition opens to coincide with Art Week, but it operates at an entirely different frequency. Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s creative director since 2016, has selected four of Perriand’s lesser-seen works – the ‘Rio de Janeiro’ bookcase (1962), the ‘Indochine Guest Armchair’ (1943), the ‘Table Mille-Feuilles’ (1963) and the monumental sofa designed for Japan’s ambassador in Paris (1967) – to be produced in limited editions. Each has been recreated from archive drawings, original models or one-off pieces, using the same species of wood, metal and cane that defined Perriand’s original vision.

The results are remarkable for their restraint. The ‘Table Mille-Feuilles’, formed from ten stacked layers of contrasting rosewood and cherry, is both sculpture and surface, lightness and density. The ‘Indochine Armchair’, conceived during Perriand’s time in Vietnam, marries industrial tubular steel with the warmth of local artisanship, an early expression of global modernism that is continually current and effortless.

And the ‘Japanese Ambassador’s Sofa’, a sweeping five-seat banquette that appears to float on its curved rosewood base, is technically furniture, but with bone structure to die for and catwalk-model poise. The Japanese Embassy in Paris helped to identify important details of the banquette to help bring it back to life in this edition.

For Vaccarello, this is about precision as much as it is about reinterpretation. His direction at Saint Laurent has often blurred the lines between fashion, art and architecture, and this project is a natural continuation of that approach. As is so often true these days, the most interesting work is that which sits between disciplines. By re-manufacturing Perriand’s furniture with the same care given to haute couture, the collaboration elevates these functional objects into studies of proportion, craft and materiality.

The dialogue also makes historical sense. Yves Saint Laurent himself collected Perriand’s work and admired her purity of line. Theirs was an aesthetic kinship, a shared understanding and an attitude. Pierre Bergé too, backed major international retrospectives of Perriand’s work.

In today’s Paris, with major institutions at a juncture and so much of the art and design world so performative, ‘Saint Laurent – Charlotte Perriand’ is comforting in its subtle celebration of endurance. Galerie Patrick Seguin, long known for its scholarly presentations of Jean Prouvé, Pierre Jeanneret and Perriand herself, provides an ideal setting in its Jean Nouvel-designed space.

In a week when the city’s creative energy tilts toward the new, ‘Saint Laurent – Charlotte Perriand’ offers a lesson in lasting modernity and a reminder that true innovation doesn’t always have to mean invention, newness or encore du drame…

‘Saint Laurent – Charlotte Perriand’ is on view until 22 November 2025
5 Rue des Taillandiers, 75011 Paris

Charlotte Perriand was one of the few women to shape the development of modernist design in the 20th century, breaking ground in an industry dominated by men. Through furniture and interiors, her style adapted the uncompromising geometry of the era to the shape of bodies and realities of everyday life, without losing the bold vision that made modernism truly revolutionary. Though she frequently collaborated with modernist designers Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Perriand made a lasting mark on the evolution of design all her own.

Charlotte Perriand's life and influences

Born in 1903 in Paris, Perriand studied at the École de l'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs (1920–1925), before establishing herself as an interior and furniture designer. From her apartment-studio on Place Saint-Sulpice, she developed designs that eschewed decorative detail and drew on new materials including chromed tubular steel – such as her ‘Swivel Armchair’, which combined a metal frame with red leather upholstery.

Filled with her furniture designs, Perriand’s apartment became an expression of her early approach – a vision of sleek metal and minimalist forms. In 1927 she recreated the space in an installation for the Salon d’Automne, an annual exhibition devoted to avant-garde arts. The story goes that Le Corbusier – who turned down Perriand’s request to work together mere weeks beforehand, with the dismissive line ‘we don’t embroider cushions here’ – saw the installation and immediately hired her to join the atelier he ran with his cousin, the architect and furniture designer Pierre Jeanneret.

A tubular steel pioneer

Some of Perriand’s best-known work emerged from her collaborations with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret over the subsequent decade. As well as designing interiors for architectural projects including the Villa Savoye and Villa Church, two residences on the outskirts of Paris, she is said to have introduced the pair to tubular steel in furniture design.

The material was central to the creation of three designs – the ‘Adjustable Chaise Longue’, ‘Grand Comfort Armchair’, and ‘Tilting Back Armchair’ – that showed how furniture could adapt to work and leisure. The combination of rigid steel structures with soft canvas or leather resulted in utilitarian designs that were nonetheless luxurious.

The chairs were exhibited at the 1929 Salon d’Automne, within an open-plan model apartment. Inspired by the prevalent ‘machine age’, a time of industrial advancement and mechanised production, Le Corbusier had in 1923 written that a house was a ‘machine for living in’ and furniture its necessary equipment. Perriand, though aligning with the era’s ethos of mass-produced egalitarian design, infused Corbusier’s technical approach with humanity and pleasure.

A photograph of Perriand reclining on the chaise longue at the 1929 exhibition has since become iconic, as her relaxed pose alongside her cropped hair and knee-length skirt embodied the progressive modern world Perriand and her contemporaries were building for themselves.

Works in wood

By the mid-1930s, Perriand’s grip on tubular steel was loosening, and she soon embraced natural materials such as straw and wood. She turned away from Le Corbusier in 1937 to pursue her own designs.

Her wooden ‘Free-form’ tables, a series which began in 1938, were simple and practical, while elegantly refined. Designed for everyday life, they took into account varied spaces and ergonomics, often displaying organic contours. Perriand’s biographer (and son-in-law) Jacques Barsac described them as having a ‘poetic functionalism on the human scale’.

The Japan years

In 1940, just before the Nazis invaded France, Perriand sailed to Japan for two years, where she acted as official advisor on industrial design to the Japanese government. Her 1941 exhibition Tokyo and Kyoto, ‘Selection, Tradition, Creation’, showcased her own modernist designs through the lens of Japanese craft, made with materials such as bamboo and straw.

Her time in Japan was pivotal on the trajectory of her style, with subsequent work displaying clear influences of Japanese design: rooted in nature – yet efficient and utilitarian.

Perriand’s famous ‘Nuage’ (‘Cloud’) bookcase from 1953 was reportedly inspired by shelves she saw in the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto. Her modular, rectilinear design combines sliding panels, trays and wooden shelves that could be rearranged according to need. Multiple iterations were produced over the years, their rhythmic grid compositions recalling Mondrian paintings come to life.

Modularity and the art of living

For Perriand, modularity was central to achieving flexibility and freedom, and, resuming collaboration with Le Corbusier, she designed a modular kitchen for his 1952 Unite d’Habitation in Marseilles, a now-iconic mass housing block that kickstarted the brutalist style. The compact kitchen had built-in cabinets, easy-to-clean aluminium countertops and multifunctional features. A bar counter with sliding doors for dishes below provided integration with the living areas, enabling the user to be visible and connected to family life.

Perriand believed furnishings, art and architecture should be designed together to achieve the ‘art of living’, and in 1955, on a return to Japan, she demonstrated this approach in the ‘Synthèse des arts’ exhibition in Tokyo. Presented as a complete interior, the exhibition featured her furniture designs alongside artworks by contemporary and friend Fernand Léger.

Perriand applied this approach to the interiors of student accommodation projects in Paris – the Maison du Mexique and Maison de la Tunisie, both 1952 – where she collaborated with artists including Sonia Delaunay on the colour schemes and Ateliers Jean Prouvé on the furniture. Perriand also worked with Prouvé on modular metal and wooden furniture for the Air France office and employee housing in Brazzaville, Congo, in 1952.

Air France was an important client for Perriand – a collaboration strengthened by her husband, Jacques Martin, who worked for the firm – and she remodelled its offices in Paris, London and Tokyo between 1957 and 1963, blending practical business needs with a vision of modernity and comfort. The ‘Nuage’ bookcase became a statement room divider, and the modular approach to fittings and furniture enabled flexible configurations.

Perriand’s vision also extended to whole buildings. Early work focused on pre-fabricated structures: her 1934 design for a wooden waterside house on stilts (Maison au Bord de l'Eau) was intended for mass production (it was only constructed posthumously in 2013 for Louis Vuitton, which has showcased it at fairs and exhibitions since). Refuge Tonneau, a mountain shelter she designed in 1938 with Jeanneret, took the form of a futuristic, spaceship-like metal exterior in dodecahedron form with pinewood interiors; unbuilt at the time, it was later created by Cassina.

In 1967, however, she led a team of architects and designers to create the Les Arcs ski resort in the French Alps, her largest architectural project. A collection of angular buildings reflecting their mountainous surroundings, the resort hosted hundreds of guest rooms benefitting from generous views and minimalist furnishings.

Perriand died in Paris a few days after her 96th birthday, in 1999, but her legacy and influence endures. A recent resurgence of interest includes a travelling retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2019) and Design Museum in London (2021) and displays of her work at Milan Design Week 2025 presented by Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton. Major brands including Cassina continue to produce her designs, ensuring Perriand’s vision for modern life can continue in our interiors.

Six Charlotte Perriand designs to know (and own)

From 25 – 29 October, we turn to the biannual Orgatec trade fair for the latest prime picks of office furniture and workspace design. This time around, sustainability heads the thematic list, along with flexibility, and – acknowledging home and hybrid working – a cosy, at-home feeling that is gracefully fulfilled by Cassina with its Cassina Pro collection, on display at Orgatec for the first time. 

Five projects new to Cassina Pro comprise seating and desks, by Mario Bellini, Charlotte Perriand, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and Le Corbusier. Each piece, though designed from a different starting point, fulfils the same end goal – to enhance the office experience visually and in tactility. Designers such as Linde Freya Tangelder and Mikal Harrsen also join the team for Orgatec, accentuating Cassina’s design collaborations.

In ‘Cab Office’, an evolution of the ‘Cab’ chair, originally designed in 1977 by Mario Bellini, the brand has revamped the simple structure into a swivel chair. The chair comes in five subtle colours and three designs with varying backrest heights and seat depths, covering maximum comfort and minimal forms in one go; each version sits on a five-spoke, cast-aluminium base in either a brushed polish or black finish. 

For the communal and hospitality working zones, Cassina offers up Charlotte Perriand’s ‘Banquette Mauritanie’ bench, a combination of latticed carpentry and plush upholstery, with modular elements such as changeable backrests and integrated USB sockets.

Also among the brand’s repertoire of benches, the ‘Cotone Slim’ bench by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec combines simplicity and versatility, and Le Corbusier's ‘LC16 Bureau’, originally created in 1957 as a children’s desk, has been pulled from the archives and reproduced in an adult-sized iteration.

orgatec.com

In partnership with Rémy Martin

Delight comes from on high at London’s Design Museum. Hanging from the brutalist, hyperbolic paraboloid construction’s roof on Kensington High Street is an artwork that glints and shimmers weightlessly in the reflected sunshine. Hundreds of gold origami figures twist and dance in the vast atrium, beckoning visitors toward ‘Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life’, an exhibition of the French designer and architect’s glittering career.

Created by designer Charles Kaisin, the mobile sculpture – Rémy Martin: the Centaur – is made up of 1,724 centaur figures, each one hand-gilded by renowned goldsmith Atelier Thiery to represent the Rémy Martin logo. The number of centaurs is a reference to the year 1724, when the cognac house was founded.

The mobile’s proximity to the Perriand exhibition (showing until 5 September 2021) is no accident. Intended to celebrate French talent and craftsmanship, both classic and contemporary, the kinetic installation helps shine a light on the work of a giant of 20th century design: a free spirit who championed good design for all.

Marking 25 years since the last significant presentation of Perriand’s work in London, the exhibition follows Perriand’s creative process through sketches, photographs, scrapbooks, prototypes and final pieces. It also showcases Perriand’s life as a fiercely independent pioneer, sportswoman and global traveller, who helped define the look of the modern European interior.

Acknowledging Rémy Martin’s longstanding association with craftsmanship, the sculpture project is a collaboration between two major creative talents.

Belgian Kaisin transforms and recycles everyday materials into contemporary design objects, making work that touches on the theme of geometry in movement. A qualified architect and a graduate of Ron Arad's class at the Royal College of Art in London, Kaisin completed an internship at Jean Nouvel’s studio in Paris before moving to the Kyoto University of Arts, where he studied the art of paper folding. He articulates his work – often whimsical, arresting, uniting, and powerfully celebratory – around three axes: object design, architecture, and scenography. His pieces, he says, are ‘a way of bringing people together through shared wonder’.

Atelier Thiery is a family-run gilding studio based in Paris, responsible for the restoration and beautification of some of the world’s most celebrated venues and works of art. The workshop employs traditional, artisanal techniques, passed down from generation to generation.

To mark the collaborative project’s residency at the Design Museum, a limited-edition bottle of Rémy Martin XO, produced by the house and designed by Atelier Thiery, pays homage to the illustrious dialogue between cognac and gold. Featuring an 18ct gold leaf detail, the bottle is enclosed in a gilded case inspired by the centuries-old French technique of verre églomisé, and honouring the rich blend of up to 400 eaux-de-vie that comprises Rémy Martin XO.

INFORMATION

The exclusive Rémy Martin XO x Atelier Thiery bottle is available at Selfridges. selfridges.com

Rémy Martin: The Centaur is at the Design Museum until 28 June 2021. designmuseum.org; remymartin.com

Cassina and Ginori 1735 present ‘Le Monde de Charlotte Perriand’, a fine porcelain dining set inspired by original Charlotte Perriand photography. The striking, hand-decorated tableware collection features patterns in blue and white, referencing a series of images of nature taken by the French architect in the early 1930s. 

Charlotte Perriand: photography as design tool

The collection includes a service plate, a dinner plate, a bowl and a dessert plate, featuring three different motifs. Perriand’s photography of a fishbone, a tree trunk section and patches of snow on a rocky surface, photographed in the forest of Fontainebleau, become seemingly abstract, poetic textures, their silhouettes roughly translated in blue. To create this collection, Cassina and Ginori 1735 worked closely with Pernette Perriand-Barsac, Charlotte Perriand’s daughter and founder of her architectural and design archive. 

The pioneering modernist architect (also the subject of an extensive exhibition at London’s Design Museum, opening in June 2021) often used photography as a key element of her design development, and these images in particular document Perriand’s passion for nature and organic forms. 

‘In those days, photography was still fairly new, it was revolutionary, and Charlotte instantly fell in love with it,’ explains Perriand-Barsac. The architect’s fascination with nature led her to collect found objects such as stones, roots or pieces of wood, observing their shape, materials and patterns, which would then become the inspiration for some of her designs. Through Perriand’s black and white photography, the objects become abstract, their shapes just hinted through contrast. 

‘In the 1930s, she photographed far and wide what she called art brut: when she went for a walk, along the seashore, in the countryside, or elsewhere, she picked up fishbones, or a piece of old boot washed up by the sea, and took them home to photograph,’ says Perriand-Barsac. Her description of the tableware collection: ‘a glance, energy, poetry.

The Design Museum's ‘Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life’ showcased the work and ideas of the French architect and designer through a series of thematic displays, presenting her creative process with an impressive series of sketches, photographs, notebooks, as well as furniture design prototypes, final pieces and faithful reconstructions of some of her most famous interiors.

‘Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life’ at the Design Museum

This new exhibition marked 25 years since Charlotte Perriand’s last exhibition at London’s Design Museum, held in 1996, and was put together in collaboration with the Perriand family and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, with the support of Cassina (whose catalogue includes numerous Perriand furniture reissues), and exhibition design contributions by Assemble and A Practice for Everyday Life. 

‘Charlotte Perriand was a hugely influential figure in design,’ said Design Museum chief curator Justin McGuirk. ‘Her life spanned the 20th century and her career reflects the twists and turns of the modernist movement.’ 

The Design Museum exhibition explored her work through three thematic sections, which will help outline Perriand’s design approach: ‘The Machine Age’; ‘Nature and the Synthesis of the Arts’; and ‘Modular Design for Modern Living’. Perriand’s creative transition from a modern machine aesthetic to her preference for natural forms sculpted from wood is chronicled through the show, and this process comes together in her all-encompassing vision of a ‘synthesis of the arts’, where design, art and architecture combine. 

Described as ‘a free spirit who championed design for all’, Perriand subscribed to modernist aesthetics that were reflected in her furniture and architecture designs. She famously said ‘dwellings should be designed not only to satisfy material specifications; they should also create conditions that foster harmonious balance and spiritual freedom in people’s lives’, and the Design Museum exhibition helps bring her ideas back to life. 

Exhibition design and graphics

The Museum collaborated with Assemble for the exhibition design, and A Practice for Everyday life supplied the graphics for the space (and designed the accompanying monograph), including a threedimensional typeface made of bent steel tubes that referenced Perriand's furniture. The exhibition’s bold colour palette reflected Perriand’s own use of colour, and partitions throughout the space frame compositions of her works and interiors spaces. Bespoke folded metal captions were integrated into display surfaces and structures, made of modular concrete blocks.

Charlotte Perriand: her life in art, design and architecture

Perriand was born in Paris in 1903, and studied furniture design at the École de l'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs. She came to prominence soon after graduating in 1925, with projects such as the 1927 ‘Bar sous le toit’ (Bar under the roof) created for her own apartment-studio in Paris’ Saint-Sulpice. This minimalist and functional apartment space that she designed for her life and work was faithfully reproduced at the exhibition’s entrance.

Early examples of modular metal furniture, as well as the sketches, models and plans behind the designs formed the core of ‘The Machine Age’. Several vignettes recreated Perriand’s interiors, demonstrating the modernity of her aesthetic and approach to space and living. It was during this time that she started working with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, a decade-long collaboration that resulted in furniture pieces such as the 1928 ‘Chaise longue basculante’ or the ‘Fauteil grand confort’ from the same year, as well as several interiors, including an installation proposing single-room living at the Salon d’Automne in 1929. 

In the 1930s, Perriand’s interest shifted from metal furniture and industrialised production towards nature, and her artistic work took a turn in this direction. Brilliantly exemplified through ‘Nature and the Synthesis of the Arts’, this shift included organic furniture forms in wood and leather, inspired by personal collections of found natural objects such as rocks, sticks and fossils. The exhibition included black and white photography and experimental sketches; mixed with furniture from the time, these give a sense of how these inspirations were translated through Perriand’s sensibility.

‘Modular Designs for Modern Living’ forms a synthesis of Perriand’s trajectory through modernity, and shows her work in modular furnishings, interior design and architecture. She strived to create affordable and adaptable interiors, and some of her best known furniture works include bookcase designs originally conceived for student dormitories – a fitting example of democratic design, featuring a simple, modular construction in wood and plastic. The exhibition culminates with the legendary work for the French ski resort Les Arcs in 1968, with a life-sized model and a film that helps visitors immerse themselves in her pragmatic design thinking. 

Perhaps most poetically, the show’s last item on display demonstrates Perriand’s curiosity and humour. It’s a vase she had bought in Brazil in the 1960s, made from an everyday plastic bottle that, she had said, captured the essence of good design to be resourceful, intelligent and infused with humanity. 

‘The last time Perriand had an exhibition at the Design Museum, in 1996, she was concerned at first that she was being presented as a furniture designer,’ says McGuirk. ‘Twenty-five years later, there is no risk of any misunderstanding. Here, she is presented as a synthesiser, a collaborator, an integrator. A Perriand interior remains kind of ideal, a harmony of contrasts and disciplines that is difficult to replicate. And it is this ideal that she offered as a framework to those who wished to live a modern life, like her own.’

INFORMATION

‘Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life' is at the Design Museum, London, 19 June-5 September 2021

designmuseum.org

ADDRESS

224-238 Kensington High Street
London W8 6AG

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Last year, Italian brand Cassina broadened its horizons. With Patricia Urquiola spearheading as art director, it launched The Cassina Perspective – a visual path of its creativity that celebrates reborn classics and contemporary design. For 2020, Cassina are shifting this lens outdoor with a collection of pieces designed by Rodolfo Dordoni, Philippe Starck and Urquiola, plus of course, some refreshed midcentury icons.

‘Today the outdoors is considered an important part of our lives,’ says Luca Fuso, CEO of Cassina. The Cassina Perspective Goes Outdoor range takes inspiration from plenty of al fresco joy – for Starck, it was nature. For the French designer’s seating and coffee table, he employed hand craft to create a tactile and warm aura. Meanwhile, the charm of 1950s holiday resorts are the source of inspiration for Dordoni, who creates an urban range titled Sail Out, which includes modular seating and dining arrangements, that could easily style a city outdoor environment.

Urquiola’s design travels further north – ‘During a trip to Greenland I noted these little trampolines outside the locals’ houses. This playful object inspired me to design Trampoline.’ Described as a love bed, the curvaceous structure invites guests with soft upholstery and rope detailing.

Combining these new products with midcentury marvels was a natural decision for the Cassina team, ‘our values are based on avant-gardism, authenticity, excellence and the combination of technological capacity with skilled hand craftsmanship... whether a new product or classic reedition,’ Fuso says. Charlotte Perriand’s 1947 The Doron Hotel armchair, a design in teak that echoes her adoration for the mountains and winter voyages, has been given an outdoor hydro oil finish. Meanwhile, the versatile LC Collection, realised by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Perriand as simple and functional forms, has been relaunched in outdoor-friendly iterations too.

Cassina works with Le Corbusier Foundation to reconstruct natural details for these designs, while engaging with the three pioneers’ passion for the outdoors – Le Corbusier cities in The Decorative Art of Today, 1st ed. Paris, G. Crès, coll. ‘The New Spirit,’ 1925, Paris, Flammarion, 1996, p.198 – ‘My childhood years were spent with my classmates amongst nature […] I knew flowers inside out, the shapes and colours of birds, how a tree grows, and it balances even in the eye of a storm. The tree, a man’s friend, a symbol of all organic creation; the tree, the image of a complete construction.’

INFORMATION

cassina.com

When Artcurial was born in 2002, the world wasn’t lacking auction houses, yet there existed ‘an opportunity to rock the boat and push the boundaries,' says Fabien Naudan, Artcurial’s co-founder and vice president. Part of the Dassault Group with its origins in the aircraft industry, Artcurial compares to its heavyweight competitors like ‘a customised private jet that can land anywhere to an aircraft that carries 300 passengers across the Atlantic.’ It may not be the place to put out the world’s most expensive painting, but it’s certainly a go-to address if you want your piece to be associated with a fascinating story and a unique experience.

Artcurial’s DNA is a constant search for new, cross-over concepts and dialogues — while never exploiting a successful idea until it’s squeezed dry. As a result, an Artcurial sale becomes a cultural case study, like last year’s C.R.E.A.M, an overview of the three decades of urban culture in the U.S. As a side effect, the world of design opens up to new audiences; one good example is the 2006 ‘Black’ sale that showcased black items in an all-black interior and where a customer who claimed to ‘hate design' has purchased some armchairs by design icon Joe Colombo.

The principle of offering new perspectives on familiar things applies to both one-off and annual sales like those focused on French, Scandinavian and Italian design. The sale on 19 November, putting out a selection of French and Italian items, is no exception.

Studio BBPR – the architects behind Milan’s emblematic Velasca Tower – are among Artcurial’s Italian headliners. Auctioned tomorrow will be two ceiling lights from BBPR’s only project in India. A true forerunner of the postmodernist approach, the fixture is based on their 1962 piece produced by Italian company Arteluce and assembled from various-sized versions of a lamp designed by the company’s founder Gino Sarfatti.

Another unique piece is a chandelier that was designed by Jean Royère for the Iran House at the Cité internationale universitaire in Paris. One of the boldest structural designs of the 1960s, the Iran House was spearheaded by the Shah of Iran and intended as student accommodation for his country’s future elite. André Bloc and Claude Parent were in charge of the architectural project, while Jean Royère — who had previously received private commissions from the Shah and his spouse — has outfitted the director's apartment on the top floor, where this chandelier occupied the central position.

Charlotte Perriand’s sideboard ‘En forme’ reminds of the designer’s connection with Japan. Invited to advice on developing the country’s industrial design, Perriand discovered the Japanese philosophy of life that has resonated with her own creative stance and profoundly influenced her subsequent work.

There is also an interesting take on the furniture with enhanced functionality, like Jean Prouvé’s triplet of tip-up seats or a bed based on his original design for a university residence and incorporating a bedside table and a bookshelf. The armchairs by Augusto Romano have armrests that morph into mini-shelves to tuck away a 1940s ashtray, a book, or a 2019 iPhone. A display case by Carlo Scarpa offers a glimpse of the architect’s game-changing contribution to the design of museum exhibitions.

Works by Ingo Maurer stand out in the impressive selection of lighting pieces. An installation in which luminous objects made from sheets of copper and gold-leafed paper populate a large copper-clad table pays homage to the late master’s lifelong exploration of reflections and shadows.

INFORMATION

‘Design Italien’ and ‘Design’ auctions will be held on 19 November. artcurial.com

Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) was a pioneer in using tubular steel to create mass-market furniture, helping shape the modernist movement. The Paris-born architect and designer is now getting her overdue recognition in an exhibition of works at Venus Over Manhattan in New York City.

This is the largest exhibition of Perriand’s work, exploring almost 50 works spanning the breadth of the designer’s nearly eight-decade career.

Produced in collaboration with François Laffanour of Galerie Downtown in Paris, the exhibition brings together Venus Over Manhattan’s commitment to highlighting ‘established artists whose works have been somewhat overlooked’ and Laffanour’s focus on 20th-century European and American masters of design to inform a unique lens.

Perriand first made a splash at the Salon d’Automne with her ‘Bar sous le Toit’, a bar constructed of polished aluminum and glass shelves (1927). One of those impressed by the project was Le Corbusier, who hired Perriand to lead design for his studio — after rejecting her portfolio earlier that year with: ‘We don’t embroider cushions here.’

Together, they went on to design iconic pieces such as the ‘LC4 chaise lounge’ and ‘Fauteuil chrome tubulaire, Édition Thonet’ (with Pierre Jeanneret, 1928), both which helped to establish the machine aesthetic and a highlight of the exhibition.

Other works on display include a rare six-sided table, appropriately called ‘Table à six pans’ (1949) based on the design of Perriand’s first wooden table, which she made in 1938 for her apartment in Montparnasse and her ‘Cusine-Bar Marseille’ (1952) installed alongside kelly green and mustard-coloured walls.

‘Charlotte Perriand’ is currently on view a short walk away from other women-headling shows currently taking over New York: Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim and Martha Rosler at the Jewish Museum.

INFORMATION
‘Charlotte Perriand’ is on view until 12 January 2019. For more information, visit the Venus Over Manhattan website and the Galerie Downtown website

ADDRESS

980 Madison Avenue
3rd Floor
New York
NY 10075

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Karl Lagerfeld, one-time guest editor of Wallpaper*, is a fan of Cassina furniture. He’s been collecting pieces from the Italian stalwart for half a century – his first ‘order’ was the famous ‘LC4’ chaise longue by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand in the 1960s. Having lived with, laid upon, and loved, each piece he has owned, Lagerfeld was the ideal photographer for a new photobook, Cassina as seen by Karl that documents (and salutes) the brand’s 90-year history.

It’s the first time Lagerfeld has collaborated with a furniture manufacturer on a venture of this nature, where his favourite design references would ‘pose’ in front of the lens. The project was entrusted to him in 2013, alongside Gerhard Steidl. The renowned German publisher, who has been involved at every turn, printed the limited edition photos which were first shown at first in the Cassina Saint-Germain showroom during Paris Design Week, and then internationally. Now, the dynamic snaps have been stuck into a beautifully leather-bound commemorative publication by hand, imbuing it with an uncommon sense of fragility, not dissimilar to that of a treasured family photo album.

Described as an ‘anthology of haute-couture design’, Cassina as seen by Karl features pieces from Lagerfeld’s own collection, including the Le Corbusier-Jeanneret-Perriand masterwork, and the ‘Auckland’ armchair by Jean-Marie Massaud. Arranged in graphic compositions, the familiar shapes are seen as if for the first time. Chairs are stacked in colourful jumbes, bookshelves talk to each other, a table becomes the protagonist on a darkened stage. It’s a book, says Steidl, that ‘rivals Cassina’s furniture in terms of quality materials, craftsmanship and longevity.’

Indeed, Lagerfeld’s passion is punched into the pages. ‘I had never worked on this kind of project,’ he says. ‘To visually reinterpret examples of perfect design is completely new for me, and therefore stimulating, exciting even.’

The publication – which will please both furniture fans and Lagerfeld lovers – presents a rare picture of the storied aesthete as not just a designer, but a design devotee.

INFORMATION

Cassina as seen by Karl, published by Gerhard Steidl. For more information, visit the website

Ardent admirers and collectors of Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand, Serge Mouille and Le Corbusier will already know that Laffanour Galerie Downtown Paris stands out for its superior selection of 20th-century furniture and decorative objects. At the annual Biennale des Antiquaires – freshly branded La Biennale Paris – the Left Bank gallery once again staged an immersive and inspired arrangement of its collection, this time with a few noteworthy additions.

With faux structural columns in high-gloss bluish grey placed throughout the booth, visitors immediately sense the shift from the Beaux-Arts expanse of the Grand Palais to a modern architectural style and scale. The space, despite its brief six-day run, feels permanent. ‘What I love with the columns is the reference to Le Corbusier but at the same time, also a reference to the classicism of Greece, which he was actually referencing, too,’ François Laffanour told us.

The dark palette continues along the left wall where a Perriand bookcase is complemented by her ‘Forme Libre’ table and armchairs, the latter newly reupholstered in graphic cowhide. Laffanour says this ensemble suggests ‘great rigour and elegance’, adding that ‘here, you see the most beautiful of Perriand’s works; there’s obvious simplicity as well as luxury even though the materials that are not at all luxurious’.

To the right, a grouping of chairs and a sofa by Pierre Jeanneret appear in the same cowhide, with further punch provided by Prouvé’s ‘Bahut’ console panelled in red. Hanging directly above is a unique Le Corbusier tapestry filled with expressive shapes including a geometric plot of primary colours, decoupage-style bodies, a pair of footprints and a meandering rope. Titled ‘Trace des pas dans la nuit’ (‘Trace of footprints in the night’), it is listed by the Fondation Le Corbusier but was never commercialised.

Workmanship aside, the large format and dynamic composition make it as visually impactful as anything in the booth. But just a little further on, a bookcase from Prouvé is, in its own way, equally remarkable. Commissioned in 1951 to furnish the Villa Dollander in southeastern France, it features three green steel beams staggered with shelves, the lowest one swooping outward to function as a desk. Laffanour notes a ‘poetry’ to the design, pointing out how Prouvé has ‘humanised’ an otherwise utilitarian form.

The effect of an enlarged Le Corbusier print along one back wall and a floor-to-ceiling mirror on the other seemingly expands the space beyond its 92 sq m and visitors may wish they could, indeed, proceed further. Instead, they might find themselves lingering over a rare polychrome wood sculpture, Ozon Opus I, conceived by the architect in 1947 with the help of Joseph Savina, a cabinetmaker from Brittany.

The assemblage seems dream-like and widely open to interpretation, yet there’s no denying a similarity between the rising blue mass and his distinctive ship-inspired chimney of the Cité Radieuse in Marseille. And even though Le Corbusier himself was not a sculptor, the piece, according to Laffanour, holds significance within his canon. ‘I consider it a very important piece; what you see is so original – a little surrealist, a little cubist. It’s truly extraordinary. I was eager to show this because as a counterpoint to the furniture that is well-balanced, this presents a notion that is sculptural yet also mental,’ he explains, noting how it brings dimension to the abstracted, cubist aspects that Le Corbusier had pursued in his earlier purist paintings with Amédée Ozenfant.

This version, with its name referring to the Pyrenean village where Le Corbusier lived for a short time in 1940, is one of three and belonged to Savina himself. Apparently, the architect intended to make a larger version, no doubt amplifying the strangeness. Yet at this size, the sculpture feels contained and satisfying – an impression that could just as easily apply to Galerie Downtown’s booth, as well.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Laffanour Galerie Downtown Paris website 

ADDRESS

Laffanour Galerie Downtown Paris
18 Rue de Seine
75006 Paris

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TELEPHONE

33.1 46 33 82 41

'When you buy vintage, you are purchasing more than just a piece of furniture – you're buying the history and narrative of an object,' enthuses Lionel Obadia, founder of Design Market. It was this passion for pre-loved pieces that drove him to establish his online, luxury design salesroom in 2014.

'One day I found myself looking for an Eames chair from the 1960s online,' Obadia explains. 'I spent hours and hours on eBay and other listings websites and each time I was never sure whether the pieces were authentic, or whether the vendor could be trusted. I thought, "Wouldn’t it be great to have a website that gathers all these specialist dealers in one place, where I could purchase these rare pieces in a fully secure environment?".'

And so Design Market was born. The site features over 8,000 pieces of vintage furniture from 300 worldwide dealers, presenting a novel way of reliably buying luxury, iconic design. This week marks their official international launch.

Specialising in all things midcentury modern, the website provides an unprecedented range, searchable by colour, room or style. What's more, middle-man gallery fees are cut, while exacting levels of authentication assurances remain. A team of expert moderators diligently assess and monitor the condition and provenance of each piece – as well as having the final say on the correct price.

The concept is air-tight. And no wonder – it was created by leading French business minds. In another life, Obadia was an SEO specialist and engineer. For this new venture, he was joined by fellow design devotee and sales director David Mimouni.

As well as kooky, unnamed objects of interest, the website has pieces by Charles Eames, Arne Jacobsen and Charlotte Perriand on its books – and flicking through the listings feels like you're skipping between a second-hand treasure trove and design museum. Either way, the list feels hand-picked and curated. 'We believe that the purchase of rare (and sometimes expensive) pieces is not compatible with generic listings websites like eBay,' Obadia adds. 'These sites do not offer the necessary level of security. We believe that you need specialised services such as white glove shipping and expert authentication for this level of purchase.' In typically enthusiastic fashion, Obadia concludes, 'we prefer to focus on one, niche market – and be the best at it'.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Design Market website

Photography courtesy Design Market

For the past two years, French auction house Artcurial has given collectors a good excuse to stay on in Paris after the annual FIAC art fair ends, thanks to a bumper crop of sales.

On 27 October, the Ideal Collection, a haul of 20 rare pieces of design, goes under the hammer at the house’s Napoleon III-era headquarters on the Champs-Élysées.

Artcurial vice president Fabien Naudan, and director of the design department Emmanuel Berard, co-curated the capsule sale. It includes a 1953 'Maison du Mexique' bookcase by Charlotte Perriand, complete with original concrete block legs (Berard’s favourite), and a child size ‘Oeuf’ chair by Jean Royère.

‘At the end of last year, we were assisting Mexico House at the Cité Universitaire in Paris in its renovation and we found four pairs of the original concrete blocks that Perriand had used on her bookshelf, just sitting there in a cupboard,’ explains Berard. The 'Oeuf' was another coup. In 1955 Royère created furniture for the office of a paediatrician in Lorient. For years it was thought that only one baby 'Oeuf' existed, until Artcurial got a call from a long lost surgery assistant who had been given one along the way.

‘These are very rare pieces, and their stories are the best,’ says Naudan, who himself has so many Prouvé dining tables he has lost count, many Perriand pieces and furniture by ‘the one who started it all’ – Le Corbusier.

The sale also includes a 1944 'Bone' chair by Finn Juhl and 'Second Hand Rose', a 1989 chair by Ron Arad, who was the sole focus of Artcurial’s 20-piece design sale last year. Taking place on the same day as the Ideal Collection auction is Beautiful Winners, a sale of contemporary urban and street art.

A key player in the French design art market, Artcurial has grown from 30 to 150 people and increased turnover from €30 million to €200 million since it was founded in 2002. FIAC is an important date in the calendar; ‘It used to be a localised fair, but now it’s 70 per cent French and 30 per cent visitors are from abroad, ‘says Naudan. His ‘discovery’ this year? Young artist Catherine Bastide who showed at Oliver Osborne Gallery. The works sold straight away.

In 1934, Charlotte Perriand designed an easily constructible holiday house, with two bedrooms, a fully fitted kitchen and a sailcloth-covered deck, elevated on piloti. She called it 'La Maison au bord de l'eau'. During this year's Design Miami, nearly 80 years later, the house, which won second prize in a competition run by the progressive magazine L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (the first prize winner has since disappeared without trace), was finally constructed on Miami Beach. Now it will be sold, presumably to an art collector with an equivalent passion for design.

Louis Vuitton, who has sponsored the project, first made contact with Charlotte's daughter Pernette in January 2012, when Julie de Libran visited the archives to find inspiration for the Icones collection which she designs. Louis Vuitton later suggested creating an unrealised Perriand piece (finding the archive full of unmade project), and the house won the toss. 'I never thought they'd say yes,' says Pernette.

With aluminium walls, sliding doors, and an unimaginable number of details for happy living (shelves under tables to keep napkins; fold-up, storable sun-loungers; double glazing, a double sink), the house is an apotheosis of Modernist principles brought to life. Designed to be erected by water, its iroko floors and okuma walls were also chosen for their insect-repellent qualities. Entirely contemporary by today's tastes, it was, unsurprisingly, considered utterly de trop in 1934. 'No one was interested in building it. The reaction was one of dislike to horror,' says Pernette.

She continues, 'Charlotte was dedicated to creating small living spaces. Her mission was to eliminate anything unnecessary but always to concentrate on the flow of light and air. Then you can live in the smallest of spaces.' Charlotte's own apartment in the 7th, where Pernette and her husband Jacques Barsac now live, is just 58 sq m spanning two storeys.

'Charlotte designed for the workers, not for the bourgeoisie,' says Pernette. The context of Miami during the glamorous Art Basel Miami Beach and Design Miami, might not meet those conditions. But it was a real pleasure nonetheless to see such a perfect rendition of such a worthy piece of design.

ADDRESS

The Raleigh Hotel
1775 Collins Avenue
Miami Beach FL 33139

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