Vintage cognac leather bed by Charlotte Perriand for the hotel Le Grand Coeur, France 1950

Charlotte Perriand, rest bed, cognac leather, pine, Meribel France 1950s. Méribel les Allues daybed made by Charlotte Perriand for the hotel Le Grand coeur. New cognac aniline leather upholstery.Pioneer Charlotte Perriand burst onto the French design scene in her early twenties, seemingly undeterred by obstacles at a time when even the progressive Bauhaus school of design forbade women from taking courses in architecture and furniture design. She studied under Maurice Dufrêne at the École de l'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, entered a competition at the 1925 Expo des Arts Décoratifs at the age of 22, and won critical acclaim for her exhibition at the 1927 Salon d'Automne.Buoyed by this success, that same year she joined the Paris design studio of Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. For ten years, the three men collaborated on the creation of "equipment for life", such as the iconic Chaise Longue B306 in tubular steel (1928). After World War II, Perriand teamed up with Jean Prouvé to create modernist furniture that combined the precise lines of Prouvé's folded steel with the soft, rounded edges and warmth of natural wood.In 1940, after falling out with Le Corbusier, Perriand traveled to Japan as an industrial design advisor for the Imperial Ministry of Trade and Industry. This experience proved invaluable to the development of his aesthetic, particularly his love of nature and rustic materials. One of her most famous commissions in the 1960s was the design of rustic and sensual pine furniture for the apartments in Les Arcs, a huge ski resort in the Tarentaise Valley of France. In 1983, Charlotte Perriand was awarded the Legion of Honor, France's highest honor. Major retrospectives on Perriand have been held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (1985) and the Design Museum in London (1998).