Charlotte Perriand was born in Paris in 1903. In 1927, when she was only 24 years old, she showed a “Bar under the roof” made out of steel and aluminum at the Salon d’Automne, prompting Le Corbusier to hire her as a furniture designer.
Some of the prototypes she produced for the Salon d’Au- tomne held two years later — Equipement intérieur de l’habitation — a project signed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand, provoked a chain reaction that has not yet come to an end.
In 1940, Perriand was invited to Japan to be the official advisor on industrial design for the Ministry of Trade and Industry. She recommended that the Japanese turn their efforts to creating products for export to the West. Unfortunately, her stay was cut short by the outbreak of World War II. Unable to travel back home due to the naval blockades, she stayed in Vietnam for four years until the war ended. There she learned about weaving, woodwork, rattan, and other natural products.
After this experience, she turned to the radical idea of using more rustic materials such as bamboo and cane to create more affordable, mass-produced furniture.
