The Circa EditThe Circa Edit: 10 Lots for a Los Angeles House
Our specialists pick ten lots from the current sale against a brief every designer in this city recognises: hard light, open plan, doors that stay open.
1903–1999
French designer who moved modernism from tubular steel to pine and rope, and furnished an entire alpine resort along the way.
Why they matter
Perriand joined Le Corbusier's studio in 1927 and led its furniture work for a decade, co-authoring the tubular steel pieces still sold as the LC series. The years she spent in Japan and Vietnam from 1940 changed her materials rather than her method. After the war she worked in oak, pine, bamboo and rattan, with the same insistence that a piece be planned from how a body uses it.
Her postwar output is largely commission work. The Cansado benches were made for a mining town in Mauritania. The stools, benches and nightstands that surface most often at auction came out of Les Arcs, the ski resort she furnished between 1967 and 1982.
That origin is what holds the value. These are not studio one-offs but resort furniture built in quantity from solid pine, and the examples that have grown more interesting with age are the ones with honest wear in the seat and no refinishing.
Available now
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Key forms & materials
Forms
- Cansado bench
- Berger stool
- Les Arcs stool
- CP1 wall sconce
- La Cachette chair
Materials
- Solid pine
- Oak
- Enamelled steel
- Rattan
What to look for
Marks, editions, patina and production partners — fact-checked for this designer.
- Perriand did not sign furniture, so attribution rests on documentation: a Galerie Steph Simon provenance, a Les Arcs or Cansado commission record, or an entry in the catalogue compiled with her daughter Pernette Perriand-Barsac.
- Cassina holds the licence for the LC series she co-authored with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, and for a small number of her solo designs, and current production is marked.
- Les Arcs pine stools and benches are among the most reproduced forms in the market and the copies are good, so look for the dry open grain and the slight dishing that decades of use leave in a solid pine seat.
- Anything described as in the style of Perriand is a resemblance and carries no attribution weight.
Past Circa results
Search all Charlotte Perriand results- $6,500
- $3,300
- $1,100
- $800
- $800
- $750
- $600
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- $9,500
- $8,250
- $1,900
- $1,900
- $1,000
- $800
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