Vintage Les Arcs leather chair, Charlotte Perriand selection, 1960

This Les Arcs chair was selected by Charlotte Perriand for the alpine resort of Les Arcs in the Tarentaise Valley, France in the 1960s. The structure is made of chromed metal. The seat and backrest are made of high quality natural leather in cognac color. The chair is light and comfortable. The designer called her chairs "seating machines", which had to fulfill the functions for which they were designed and adapt to human needs.Charlotte Perriand was a French architect and designer. Her work aimed to create functional living spaces in the belief that better design helps create a better society. In his 1981 article L'Art de Vivre, he states: The art of living is an extension of the art of inhabiting - living in harmony with man's deepest impulses and with his adopted or manufactured environment. At the age of twenty-four, Charlotte Perriand approached Le Corbusier and asked him to join the famous design studio. Le Corbusier rejected her, commenting on the famous phrase that we don't embroider pillows here. A few months later, after seeing her Bar sous le toi at the Salon D'Automne exhibition in Paris, he apologized and hired her. Perriand would work for him for ten years, collaborating with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret on many projects, including the set of tubular steel chairs that would become one of his best-known designs. In the 1930s, concerned with social issues, Perriand focused on creating functional and affordable designs. Moving away from the aesthetics of glass and metal, Perriand began to experiment with natural materials. She traveled to Japan as an official industrial design advisor to the Ministry of Trade and Industry and fell in love with the simple beauty of Japanese design. Perriand studied local woodworking and immersed herself in functional yet sophisticated forms. Perriand resumed her career after returning to Europe in 1947, creating a harmonious simplicity in her designs - what she called the art of living. She continued to work with Le Corbusier at the Unité d'Habitation de Marseille and collaborated on various projects with Fernand Léger and Jean Prouvé. In 1985, her long career was celebrated with a retrospective at the Musée des Arts-Décoratifs in Paris and she remains one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. The chair is in original vintage condition. It has a slight discoloration of the leather, a natural patina, a repair of the leather on the back. A plastic foot stopper is missing. The seat measures 43 cm high.