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The trio of Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret is known for its widely acclaimed and influential modernist furniture designs.

In the early 1920s, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the revered Swiss-French architect known professionally as Le Corbusier, entered into collaboration with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, who shared his grand vision for egalitarian building projects and interior design. They later recruited the pioneering young female architect Charlotte Perriand to join their venture.

Perriand's installation Bar sous le toit (“bar under the roof”), a recreation of part of her own apartment shown at the 1927 Salon d’Automne in Paris, caught Le Corbusier's attention and prompted the cousins to recruit her to work at their architecture practice. She would be tasked with designing interiors and furniture. Such status was rare for a woman at the time — in fact, when Perriand sought work at Le Corbusier’s atelier mere months before the exhibition, he famously dismissed her with a sexist remark.

The collective called their shared project l’équipement d'intérieur de l’habitation (“the interior equipment of the house”), and they designed furniture that remains celebrated today. The LC series of armchairs, lounge chairs and sofas, for example, saw the designers working with tubular chrome steel and plush foam cushions upholstered in leather. Bereft of ornament and prized for its functionality, the series is currently manufactured by Cassina. The cohort's LC4 chaise lounge was displayed at the 1929 Salon d’Automne, and the spare but sculptural seat — as well as the group’s other furnishings — influenced the likes of Willy Rizzo as well as a range of other modernist designers and furniture innovators.

Reportedly owing to political differences, the trio’s collaboration ended in 1937. Le Corbusier and Pierre continued working together, primarily in architecture.

In the early 1950s, at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Le Corbusier and his cousin collaborated on a building project in Chandigarh, India. While the Chandigarh project is most frequently associated with Le Corbusier, he didn’t actually move to India and instead monitored progress during visits to the region. Pierre, however, was extensively involved. As the project’s first chief architect, Pierre remained onsite to oversee implementation of design and to coordinate construction of schools, government housing, shopping centers and more.

In 1940, Charlotte Perriand moved to Japan after France fell to Nazi forces. She was offered a position at the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry as a consultant on the country’s industrial arts. While there, Perriand adopted many Japanese artistic principles and incorporated them into her own revolutionary furniture designs. She would also closely collaborate with self-taught French furniture designer Jean Prouvé in the years that followed.

Time has shown that some of the works attributed to the Jeanneret cousins are either Perriand’s own designs or she was an uncredited contributor.

On 1stDibs, find an array of vintage Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret furniture, including tables, storage cabinets and lighting.

The Bauhaus was a progressive German art and design school founded by the architect Walter Gropius that operated from 1919 to 1933. Authentic Bauhaus furniture — sofas, dining chairs, tables and more — and the school’s followers married industrial and natural materials in simple, geometric forms. The goal of the Bauhaus was to erase the distinction between art and craft while embracing the use of new technologies and materials.

ORIGINS OF BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGN

• Art and design school established in Germany in 1919
• Promotion of a union of art, craft and technology
• Design intended for mass production
• School’s workshops focused on cabinetry, metalworking, typography, textiles and more
• Informed by De Stijl, Constructivism, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, and modernism; influenced mid-century modernism, Scandinavian modernism

CHARACTERISTICS OF BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGN

• Emphasis on craft
• Simplicity, order, clarity and a prioritization of functionalism
• Incorporation of geometric shapes
• Minimalist and refined, little to no ornamentation
• Use of industrial materials such as tubular chrome, steel and plastic as well as leather, cane and molded plywood in furniture and other products

BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGNERS YOU SHOULD KNOW

• László Moholy-Nagy
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• Anni Albers
• Josef Hoffmann
• Marcel Breuer
• Marianne Brandt

AUTHENTIC BAUHAUS FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

The name Bauhaus is derived from the German verb bauen, “to build.” Under the school’s innovative curriculum, students were taught the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture, as well as practical skills like carpentry and metalworking. 

The school moved from Weimar in 1925 to the city of Dessau, where it enjoyed its heyday under Gropius, then Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The period from 1932 to 1933 when it operated in Berlin under Mies was its final chapter. Despite its brief existence, the Bauhaus has had an enduring impact on art and design in the United States and elsewhere, and is regarded by many as the 20th century’s chief crucible of modernism. 

The faculty roster at the Bauhaus reads like a who’s who of modernist creative genius — it included such artists as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy along with architects and designers like Mies and Marcel Breuer, who became known for his muscular brutalist-style concrete buildings in the postwar years. In 1925, while he was head of the Bauhaus carpentry workshop, Breuer gave form to his signature innovation: the use of lightweight tubular-steel frames for chairs, side tables and sofas — a technique soon adopted by Mies and others. Breuer’s Cesca chair was the first-ever tubular steel frame chair with a caned seat to be mass produced, while the inspiration for his legendary Wassily chair, a timeless design and part of the collection crafted to furnish the Dessau school, was the bike he rode around campus.

Bauhaus design style reflects the tenets by which these creators worked: simplicity, clarity and function. They disdained superfluous ornament in favor of precise construction. Seating pieces such as side chairs, armchairs or club chairs for example, were made with tubular metal or molded plywood frames, and upholstery was made from leather or cane. Above all, designs in the Bauhaus style offer aesthetic flexibility. They can be the elements of a wholly spare, minimalist space, the quiet foundation of an environment in which color and pattern come from one’s own collection of art and artifacts.

Today, from textiles to typefaces, architecture, furniture and decorative objects for the home, Bauhaus creations continue to have an outsize influence on modern design.

Find a collection of authentic Bauhaus furniture on 1stDibs.

With entire areas of our homes reserved for “sitting rooms,” the value of quality antique and vintage seating cannot be overstated.

Fortunately, the design of side chairs, armchairs and other lounge furniture — since what were, quite literally, the early perches of our ancestors — has evolved considerably.

Among the earliest standard seating furniture were stools. Egyptian stools, for example, designed for one person with no seat back, were x-shaped and typically folded to be tucked away. These rudimentary chairs informed the design of Greek and Roman stools, all of which were a long way from Sori Yanagi's Butterfly stool or Alvar Aalto's Stool 60. In the 18th century and earlier, seats with backs and armrests were largely reserved for high nobility.

The seating of today is more inclusive but the style and placement of chairs can still make a statement. Antique desk chairs and armchairs designed in the style of Louis XV, which eventually included painted furniture and were often made of rare woods, feature prominently curved legs as well as Chinese themes and varied ornaments. Much like the thrones of fairy tales and the regency, elegant lounges crafted in the Louis XV style convey wealth and prestige. In the kitchen, the dining chair placed at the head of the table is typically reserved for the head of the household or a revered guest.

Of course, with luxurious vintage or antique furnishings, every chair can seem like the best seat in the house. Whether your preference is stretching out on a plush sofa, such as the Serpentine, designed by Vladimir Kagan, or cozying up in a vintage wingback chair, there is likely to be a comfy classic or contemporary gem for you on 1stDibs.

With respect to the latest obsessions in design, cane seating has been cropping up everywhere, from sleek armchairs to lounge chairs, while bouclé fabric, a staple of modern furniture design, can be seen in mid-century modern, Scandinavian modern and Hollywood Regency furniture styles.

Admirers of the sophisticated craftsmanship and dark woods frequently associated with mid-century modern seating can find timeless furnishings in our expansive collection of lounge chairs, dining chairs and other items — whether they’re vintage editions or alluring official reproductions of iconic designs from the likes of Hans Wegner or from Charles and Ray Eames. Shop our inventory of Egg chairs, designed in 1958 by Arne Jacobsen, the Florence Knoll lounge chair and more.

No matter your style, the collection of unique chairs, sofas and other seating on 1stDibs is surely worthy of a standing ovation.