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Lot Essay
Charlotte Perriand's design for a Bar in the Attic (Bar sous le toit) of her own apartment in the Place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, marks the major turning point in her early career. Shown at the Salon d'Automne in 1927, the bar was a tremendous success with both the public and critics. René Chavance wrote in his review for La Demeure française "But what a pretty mansard!...One cannot imagine anything fresher or more youthful". Le Corbusier was so favorably impressed by the bar that he agreed to employ Perriand in his atelier, despite his reservations about women as designers.
Perriand fitted the bar in the attic with nickeled-steel and glass; color was provided by the pink and violet leather upholstery of a banquette and stools. In another corner of the room, in front of a white painted shelf containing a few selected objects, stood the present table. The geometric intersecting planes of the table's stem were echoed in the base of the stool which she cleverly placed next to it.
The Bar in the Attic, with its hard surfaces and elegant lines, was a transformation of Perriand's work. Only a few months before, at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, she had presented a silver cabinet with precious violet-wood veener. This piece was only slightly more modern than her interior for the Salon the previous year, a traditional and slightly clumsy looking Corner of a Living Room in the prevalent Art Deco style.
In the new-found modern chic of her Bar in the Attic, Perriand acknowledged French society's growing interest in new materials and a 'machine age' aesthetic. She acquired a car's headlight to light her dining room, thus connecting the outer sphere of living with the intimacy of a private home. It was a time when 24-year old Perriand established herself as an emancipated working woman - an attitude which stretched from her choice of jewelry (chrome beads) and a Josephine-Baker-haircut to her work as a designer. In the redefinition of her own personal style, she also pushed the boundaries of the aesthetic ideas traditionally associated with feminity.
The following year, at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1928, Perriand included the table in her Dining Room of an apartment presented in collaboration with René Herbst, Djo-Bourgeois, Georges Fouquet and Gérard Sandoz. The table and the stool from the Bar in the Attic were the only pieces that were reintegrated into the new display, which now focused on mirrored glass and tubular steel. The dining room was praised by the critics and lauded for its pleasant atmosphere - a compliment not many of her modernist male colleagues received. The Dining Room was Perriand's first project, undertaken independently, since she had started working for Le Corbusier.
The dining table from this room is now in the collection of the Musée des National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Perriand fitted the bar in the attic with nickeled-steel and glass; color was provided by the pink and violet leather upholstery of a banquette and stools. In another corner of the room, in front of a white painted shelf containing a few selected objects, stood the present table. The geometric intersecting planes of the table's stem were echoed in the base of the stool which she cleverly placed next to it.
The Bar in the Attic, with its hard surfaces and elegant lines, was a transformation of Perriand's work. Only a few months before, at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, she had presented a silver cabinet with precious violet-wood veener. This piece was only slightly more modern than her interior for the Salon the previous year, a traditional and slightly clumsy looking Corner of a Living Room in the prevalent Art Deco style.
In the new-found modern chic of her Bar in the Attic, Perriand acknowledged French society's growing interest in new materials and a 'machine age' aesthetic. She acquired a car's headlight to light her dining room, thus connecting the outer sphere of living with the intimacy of a private home. It was a time when 24-year old Perriand established herself as an emancipated working woman - an attitude which stretched from her choice of jewelry (chrome beads) and a Josephine-Baker-haircut to her work as a designer. In the redefinition of her own personal style, she also pushed the boundaries of the aesthetic ideas traditionally associated with feminity.
The following year, at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1928, Perriand included the table in her Dining Room of an apartment presented in collaboration with René Herbst, Djo-Bourgeois, Georges Fouquet and Gérard Sandoz. The table and the stool from the Bar in the Attic were the only pieces that were reintegrated into the new display, which now focused on mirrored glass and tubular steel. The dining room was praised by the critics and lauded for its pleasant atmosphere - a compliment not many of her modernist male colleagues received. The Dining Room was Perriand's first project, undertaken independently, since she had started working for Le Corbusier.
The dining table from this room is now in the collection of the Musée des National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.