Pine benches from an alpine resort, an oak fireside chair from a hotel that no longer has its interiors, and a bench designed for a Mauritanian mining town. Three levels of the same market.
Perriand lots turn up in almost every Circa sale, and they do not behave like a single market. A pine bench from Les Arcs and a bench from the Cansado project are separated by a factor of six in estimate, and the reason is entirely to do with what each piece was made for.
Three careers in one
Perriand was born in Paris in 1903 and died there in 1999. From 1927 to 1937 she ran the interiors work in the Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret atelier, where the LC2 armchair and the B306 chaise longue were designed. In 1940 she left for Japan as an advisor on industrial design to the Ministry for Trade and Industry, was forced out as an undesirable alien in 1942, spent the rest of the war in Vietnam and returned to France in 1946. In 1958 she designed the furniture for Cansado, a town built in Mauritania to house the staff of the Miferma iron ore company, and those pieces were edited by the Steph Simon gallery in Paris.
The last chapter is the largest. From 1967 to 1982 she led the interiors and much of the architecture of Les Arcs, the ski resort in the Savoie, working across the stations at 1600, 1800 and 2000. La Cachette, the first hotel at Arc 1600, was built under her direction from 1968. She designed its interiors; almost none of them survive in place.
The four tiers you will actually meet
- Cansado and Steph Simon editions. Designed 1958 for Mauritania, edited in Paris, made in small numbers. The top of the Circa Perriand market.
- Named resort models such as the La Cachette fireside chair. Made for one building, in one specification, and rarely released.
- Les Arcs 1600 series production. Benches, stools, sideboards and luggage racks made in volume for the apartments. Real Perriand, widely available, entry priced.
- In the style of. Rope and wood chairs following her alpine vocabulary with no attribution. Bought for the look, priced accordingly.
What the last two sales showed
The tiers are not theoretical. In The Provencal Modernist on 29 August 2026 a Cansado bench for Steph Simon carried an estimate of $5,000 to $7,500 and sold for $8,250. A set of four Dordogne dining chairs, estimated at the same level, made $9,500. A single Les Arcs 1600 pine stool estimated at $1,000 to $1,500 made $1,900. Three weeks earlier, in Modernism + Design on 8 August 2026, a set of four wood and straw chairs described as in the style of Perriand and estimated at $1,000 to $1,500 sold for $500.
Documentation is the whole spread. The same alpine vocabulary sells at four times estimate with a project attached to it and at a third of estimate without one.
What to look for
On Les Arcs pine, check the underside for the marks of contract production and look at the wear pattern: apartment furniture that spent thirty years in the Savoie has dry, silvered pine and rounded arrises, not fresh sanding. On the La Cachette chairs in this sale, the tells are the cylindrical structural members and the very low seat height, listed at 10 inches, which is a hotel fireside dimension rather than a domestic one. On any Cansado piece, ask about the join between the frame and the slats before the sale, because that is where these benches have usually been repaired.
The last question is the practical one. Les Arcs benches are 65 inches long and 12 inches deep, which is a hallway or a foot-of-bed piece rather than a sofa substitute. The Cansado bench in this sale is 102 inches. Measure the wall first.
