The Book of Tea and Perriand (Part 3)

As a young man, teamaster Rikiu studied tea under Kitmuki Dochin, then Takeno Joo, then went under zen training at the Daitoku-ji temple in Kyoto. At the age of 57, he served lead Nobunga, then the feudal lord Hideyoshi. For 50 years, Rikiu devoted his life to making tea. Much of the present aspects of tea ceremony like rustic simplicity, directness of approach, and the architecture were pioneered by Rikiu. In his later years, he not only designed the architecture of famous tiny tea rooms like the Tai-an two tatami mat room in Myoki-an temple in Yamazaki, but he also developed the furnishings of the interior experience - the flower containers, tea scoops, bamboo lid rests, and raku tea bowls. The Japanese teahouse served as an inspiration to perriand, who devoted her life to the ebb and flow between interior and exterior, and believed that furnishings and architecture needed to be developed as a single entity.

Another concept Rikiu popularized was integrating wabi sabi philosophy in the tea ceremony. In contrast to the expensive gaudy Chinese tea equipment available at the time wabi-sabi celebrates earthiness, chance, unpretentiousness and intimacy of scale. Wabi sabi isn’t about perfection, slickness, mass production, monumentality, symmetry, or trendiness, wabi-sabi is the reality of change and impermanence: “things are either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness.” The values underlying it include the following: “Truth comes from the observation of nature. Greatness exists in the inconspicuous and overlooked details. Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness.” Beauty is to be found in rustic simplicity, imperfection and change, and even in the processes of withering and decay.

Although Rikiu was one of Hideyoshi’s closest confidants, Hideyoshi ordered Rikiu to commit ritual suicide. Rikiu was an outspoken man, and often dared to differ in argument with his patron. His enemies accused him of a conspiracy to poison the lord. “It was whispered to Hideyoshi that the fatal potion was to be administered to him with a cup of the green beverage prepared by the tea-master. With Hideyoshi, suspicion was sufficient ground for instant execution, and there was no appeal from the will of the angry ruler. One privilege alone was granted to the condemned—the honor of dying by his own hand.”

Rikiu’s last act of his life was to hold an exquisite tea ceremony. After serving all his guests before he drank his last cup, he presented each of his guests a piece of his tea ceremony equipment and the kakemono, (the hanging scroll with beautiful writing dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things).

"The bowl alone he keeps. "Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of misfortune, be used by man." He speaks, and breaks the vessel into fragments. The ceremony is over; the guests with difficulty restraining their tears, take their last farewell and leave the room. One only, the nearest and dearest, is requested to remain and witness his death. Rikiu then removes his tea-gown and carefully folds it upon the mat, thereby disclosing the immaculate white death robe which it had hitherto concealed. Tenderly he gazes on the shining blade of the fatal dagger, and in exquisite verse thus addresses it with a poem he wrote:

"Welcome to thee,
O sword of eternity!
Through Buddha
And through
Dharuma alike
Thou hast cleft thy way."

With a smile upon his face Rikiu passed forth into the unknown.”

Kakuzo goes into great detail about the architecture of the Rikiu teahouse: “It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment. It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some thing unfinished for the play of the imagination to complete. The ideals of Teaism have since the sixteenth century influenced our architecture to such degree that the ordinary Japanese interior of the present day, on account of the extreme simplicity and chasteness of its scheme of decoration, appears to foreigners almost barren."

The typical tea room accommodates not more than 5 people in a 4.5 tatami space. The anteroom is where utensils are washed, a portico provides a space where guests wait to enter, and ‘roji’ or garden path connects the portico to the tearoom. “The roji was intended to break connection with the outside world, and produce a fresh sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in the tea-room itself. One who has trodden this garden path cannot fail to remember how his spirit, as he walked in the twilight of evergreens over the regular irregularities of the stepping stones, beneath which lay dried pine needles, and passed beside the moss-covered granite lanterns, became uplifted above ordinary thoughts. One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of civilisation. Great was the ingenuity displayed by the tea-masters in producing these effects of serenity and purity. The nature of the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained in the ancient ditty:

"I look beyond;
Flowers are not,
Nor tinted leaves.
On the sea beach
A solitary cottage stands
In the waning light
Of an autumn eve."

“The tea-room is unimpressive in appearance. It is smaller than the smallest of Japanese houses, while the materials used in its construction are intended to give the suggestion of refined poverty. Yet we must remember that all this is the result of profound artistic forethought, and that the details have been worked out with care perhaps even greater than that expended on the building of the richest palaces and temples. A good tea-room is more costly than an ordinary mansion, for the selection of its materials, as well as its workmanship, requires immense care and precision. Indeed, the carpenters employed by the tea-masters form a distinct and highly honoured class among artisans, their work being no less delicate than that of the makers of lacquer cabinets.”

During her travels in Japan, whenever perriand presented, she made sure to emphasize the thing she considered indispensable: innovation. “My aim was to give a sense of creation back to these artisans who were so focused on their traditions or trapped in reproducing inanimate objects copied from publications… I encouraged all of them to create new objects”.

In her own teahouse design, perriand designed every piece of furniture including the altar to the gods and ancestors, and place where utensils are stored. Following her own advice, she didn’t blindly follow longstanding japanese traditions. Her most conspicuous innovation was to set the tearoom tatamis outside under a tent. Due to bamboo’s strength and flexibility, perriand’s structure was light, slender, organic and permeable. Additionally, unlike the other tea house proposals sponsored for the exhibition, her sanctuary integrated landscape design and the roji, and was surrounded by dense bamboo plants creating a buffer area. “I decided on a pine structure with four and a half tatamis to accommodate five people… The structure seemed to float parallel to the floor, which was covered with dark stones and bamboo bowls containing limpid water… Eighteen bamboo rods -my magic circle- bowed their heads to make a 4.5-meter-height roof. A wooden ring was placed in the center, pierced by wholes to receive the rods; they also bore the weight of a Mylar sail, which formed a tent-like covering. Each section was fastened to the corresponding bamboo rod below. The green sail forming the roof also included a transparent section at the top, which allowed for a view of the sky and the passing clouds.”

Teamaster Rikiu

Taian Teahouse axonometric drawing

                                     

Perriand teahouse plan

The Book of Tea and Perriand (Part 2)

Yoko recounted a story of lennon making tea in the New York Times 10 years ago:

“John and I are in our Dakota kitchen in the middle of the night. Three cats Sasha, Micha and Charo are looking up at John, who is making tea for us two.

Sasha is all white, Micha is all black. They are both gorgeous, classy Persian cats. Charo, on the other hand, is a mutt. John used to have a special love for Charo. “You’ve got a funny face, Charo!” he would say, and pat her.

“Yoko, Yoko, you’re supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then the hot water.” John took the role of the tea maker, for being English. So I gave up doing it.

It was nice to be up in the middle of the night, when there was no sound in the house, and sip the tea John would make. That night, however, John said: “I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but ...”

“So all this time, we were doing it wrong?”

“Yeah ...”

We both cracked up. That was in 1980. Neither of us knew that it was to be the last night of our life together.

On this day, 30 years ago the day he was assassinated, what I remember is the night we both cracked up drinking tea.

They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.

Kakuzo published his Book of Tea in 1906, 2 years before the advent of the tea bag and 74 years before lennon’s death, so he wasn’t able to document the modern evolution of tea. In 1908, Thomas Sullivan, a New York tea merchant, started to send samples of tea to his customers in small silk bags. Some customers assumed that these were supposed to be used in the same way as the metal infusers, by putting the entire bag into the pot, rather than emptying out pouch’s contents into the water. It was thus by accident that the tea bag was born. Responding to the comments from his customers that the mesh on the silk was too fine, Sullivan developed tea bags made of gauze with a string with a decorated tag to facilitate removal. During the 1920s these were developed for commercial production, and the bags grew in popularity in the USA. During the 1950s in the UK tea bags gained popularity on the grounds that they removed the need to empty out the used tea leaves from the tea pot. it was during this era that lennon learned how to make tea from his aunt mimi. Now 96% of the tea made in Britain is via teabag.

Leave it to the labor saving Americans to develop tea bags. No kneeling on a tatami mat, whisking powdered tea, or contemplation of life needed. just dunk a tea bag in some luke warm water and voila! Leave it to the pedantic british to ponder the correct sequence of actions of making tea with tea bags. Kakuzo probably would’ve been horrified by Sullivan’s thoughtless automation and mass production of the tea making process and found lennon’s ‘insert tea bag after water is poured’ epiphany imbecilic. Or perhaps, like a true teaist, Kakuzo would laugh. “The ancient sages never put their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise. Laotse himself, with his quaint humour, says, "If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it." After all, kakuzo proposed, “Teaism was Taoism in disguise.”

As an aetheist I have trouble keeping track of religions. Some believe in days of atonement, others fast for a month, some set up a pine tree and put gifts underneath it purportedly delivered from a fat bearded white guy in a red clothing sliding down a chimney, some fast for a week and eat unleavened crackers, some sanction the consumption of pork, some ban the eating of a chicken and egg together, some require getting piss drunk and yelling “yankees suck, redsox rule”… it’s all very confusing to an aetheist. Rather than define Taoism first and then proceed to academically show how perriand was Taoist in design philosophy, I find it easier to learn about Taoism anecdotally through her design process. 

Perriand used the whimsical expression ‘l’oeil en eventail’ (a wide-angle eye) to refer to an important aspect of her creative process. She payed attention to every object, humble or striking, large or small, man-made or natural, and learning the lesson it had to teach. Perriand would take photos (ie., double wood trunk rings) and have them inspire forms (i.e., stove in refuge tonneau).

In the 1930s, Perriand, artist Fernand Léger, and Pierre Jeanneret enjoyed weekend expeditions to the Normandy beaches. “We would fill our backpacks with treasures: pebbles, bits of shoes, lumps of wood riddled with holes, horsehair brushes—all smoothed and ennobled by the sea,” she recalled in her 1998 autobiography. “We sorted them, admiring them, soaking them in water to give them more of a shine, and taking photographs. We called it our art brut.”

Art brut is a French term that translates as 'raw art', invented by the French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art such as graffiti or naïve art which is made outside the academic tradition of fine art. Dubuffet saw fine art as dominated by academic training, which he referred to as cultural art. For Dubuffet, art brut − which included graffiti, and the work of the insane, prisoners, children, and primitive artists was the raw expression of a vision or emotions, untethered by convention. He attempted to incorporate these qualities into his own. Perriand practiced art brut by taking pictures of chalk graffiti on the Hakusan Meru ship she rode from Marseilles to Tokyo and incorporating it in the textile design of her carpets. 

Dubuffet's art brut

To perriand, “Architecture is an ebb and flow between interior and exterior—a round-trip”… life like architecture, is a journey – they are inseparable. ''in every important decision there is one option that represents life, and that is what you must choose.'' 

Perriand's outlook on life is aligned with how Kakuzo presents Tao. "Tao is the Passage rather than the Path. It is the spirit of Cosmic Change,—the eternal growth which returns upon itself to produce new forms. It recoils upon itself like the dragon, the beloved symbol of the Taoists. Taoist Absolute was the Relative. In ethics the Taoist railed at the laws and the moral codes of society, for to them right and wrong were but relative terms. "art of being in the world… Relativity seeks Adjustment; Adjustment is Art. The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings. Taoism accepts the mundane (i.e., graffiti and flotsam perriand photographed) as it is and, unlike the Confucians or the Buddhists, tries to find beauty in our world of woe and worry. The Sung allegory of the Three Vinegar Tasters explains admirably the trend of the three doctrines. Sakyamuni, Confucius, and Laotse once stood before a jar of vinegar—the emblem of life—and each dipped in his finger to taste the brew. The matter-of-fact Confucius found it sour, the Buddha called it bitter, and Laotse pronounced it sweet.” 

Perriand’s mind was flexible. Unable to return to France during the war, she entertained ways to re-consider materials from Kakuzo's prodding "To European architects brought up on the traditions of stone and brick construction, our Japanese method of building with wood and bamboo seems scarcely worthy to be ranked as architecture." Perriand would later remark, “I saw some sugar tongs made from bamboo, created by the Institute of Tokyo, and it gave me the idea to transpose the stainless steel chaise longue from 1928, using the flexibility of machined bamboo instead of steel”, she writes in A Life of Creation. While wandering through cities like Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka and exploring the Japanese countryside in order to select “objects worthy of being exported, Perriand discovered not only the art of living in Japan, but also the art of inhabiting. “In Japan, which was 100% traditional at the time, I discovered emptiness, the power of emptiness, the religion of emptiness, fundamentally, which is not nothingness. For them, it represents the possibility of moving. Emptiness contains everything”, she explained to France Culture on Mémoires du siècle in 1997. 

Having never been to Japan myself, I don’t perfectly understand perriand’s fixation on emptiness. given america’s out of control covid situation, I predict I’ll be banned from Japan for the next several years, so i'll have to rely on Kakuzo’s insight on emptiness for now. 

“Laotse illustrates emptiness by his favourite metaphor of the Vacuum. He claimed that only in vacuum lay the truly essential. The reality of a room, for instance, was to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and the walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. The usefulness of a water pitcher dwelt in the emptiness where water might be put, not in the form of the pitcher or the material of which it was made. Vacuum is all potent because all containing. In vacuum alone motion becomes possible. One who could make of himself a vacuum into which others might freely enter would become master of all situations. The whole can always dominate the part. These Taoists' ideas have greatly influenced all our theories of action, even to those of fencing and wrestling. Jiu-jitsu, the Japanese art of self-defence, owes its name to a passage in the Tao-teking. In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum, while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final struggle. In art the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up the full measure of your aesthetic emotion. He who had made himself master of the art of living was the Real man of the Taoist. At birth he enters the realm of dreams only to awaken to reality at death. He tempers his own brightness in order to merge himself into the obscurity of others. He is "reluctant, as one who crosses a stream in winter; hesitating as one who fears the neighbourhood; respectful, like a guest; trembling, like ice that is about to melt; unassuming, like a piece of wood not yet carved; vacant, like a valley; formless, like troubled waters." To him the three jewels of life were Pity, Economy, and Modesty.”

The Book of Tea and Perriand (Part 1)

On the outside, Murcutt, utzon, and perriand are quite different architects from 3 vastly different cultures (Australian, Danish, French respectively), but they share something in common. They were all influenced by authors who at one point in their lives lived around boston (home of my beloved redsox) and studied under someone from Harvard. Murcutt was shaped by Thoreau’s teachings in Walden, Utzon was influenced by Lin Yutang’s My Country and My People, and Perriand was moved by Okakura Kakuzō’s Book of Tea. I read all these books that these architects read to gain insight how they think… how they translate ideas into built form. These books don’t necessarily talk about architecture. They aren’t instruction manuals on how to construct buildings. these book talk about ways of living, ways of seeing the world, and ways of approaching design.

Lin Yutang and Kakuzo’s proficiency in English meant they could write eloquently without losing meaning in translation. They were instrumental in opening utzon and perriand’s eyes to Asian thought. Charlotte Perriand read ‘The Book of Tea’ while she lived in Japan during the WWII. Both the book and her exile in Asia had a huge impact on her ideas and her design skills. In her autobiography, Perriand describes ‘encounters’ or her experiences that led her toward aesthetic discoveries. In japan, she found that the concepts integral to Zen philosophy and Japanese culture were strongly in line with her own worldview. Perriand is French, but acquired and enhanced her Japanese design operating system. In 1993, over 50 years after her first visit to Japan, perriand was commissioned to design a Teahouse to be part of the Japanese Cultural Festival held in Paris in 1993. Her proposal reflected her lifelong meditation on Japanese culture and zen philosophy and was located on the rooftop of the UNESCO headquarters.

I’m not a big drinker of tea or any beverage really. I tend to operate like a camel in a semi-dehydrated manner, extracting most of the liquid I need to survive from the food I eat or a couple accidental sips of water, so kakuzo’s analysis of eastern culture and religion through the lens of this beverage is interesting. Published in 1906 “The Book of Tea” is an essay broken down into 7 diverse chapters: tea’s importance within the context of Asian and western culture, the evolution and Schools of Tea, Taoism and Zennism, the architecture of Tea Room, art appreciation, flower arrangement, and Tea-Masters.

Since I have no knowledge in any of these realms, I will accept kakuzo’s analysis as true till proven otherwise. “Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism—Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence….The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature—all have been subject to its influence. No student of Japanese culture could ever ignore its presence.”

“Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea….The Cake-tea which was boiled, the Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang, the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China. If we were inclined to borrow the much-abused terminology of art-classification, we might designate them respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.”

“The tea-plant, a native of southern China, was known from very early times to Chinese botany and medicine. It was highly prized for possessing the virtues of relieving fatigue, delighting the soul, strengthening the will, and repairing the eyesight. It was not only administered as an internal dose, but often applied externally in form of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains. The Taoists claimed it as an important ingredient of the elixir of immortality. The Buddhists used it extensively to prevent drowsiness during their long hours of meditation.”

The word zen is derived from the Chinese word ‘chan’ or 禅which was derived from the Indian (the original culture of Buddhism) word for mediation ‘dhyaan’ or ध्यान. not surprisingly, the practice of zen is centered around meditation. Breathe in with full awareness. savor the breath. Appreciate it. breathe out, slowly, with equal appreciation. Blow it all away; hold onto nothing. Breathe in with gratitude; breathe out with love. this is what zen monks do each time they inhale and exhale. They do this for hour after hour, day after fucking day, drinking tea to stay awake from boredom in a state of heightened conscious awareness while I operate like a semi-dehydrated camel trying to look for a job in futility during a global pandemic.

Throughout his book, kakuzo presents many interesting theories. Again, without any knowledge, I accept kakuzo’s theories like the connection between tea culture and Chinese historic dynastical ceramic color preferences unquestioningly, “it is interesting to observe in this connection the influence of tea on Chinese ceramics. The Celestial porcelain, as is well known, had its origin in an attempt to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade, resulting, in the Tang dynasty, in the blue glaze of the south, and the white glaze of the north. Luwuh considered the blue as the ideal colour for the tea-cup, as it lent additional greenness to the beverage, whereas the white made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because he used cake-tea. Later on, when the tea masters of Sung took to the powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown. The Mings, with their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white porcelain.”

These interesting side-theories give the reader an entertaining rest as he delves back into the main subject matter of tea in great poetic detail. A lot of rituals in japan are based on Chinese precedents. Kakuzo focuses on the history of tea to show how Japanese customs and ideas developed.

On Tang tea preparation, he writes “the mountain spring is the best, the river water and the spring water come next in the order of excellence. There are three stages of boiling: the first boil is when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface; the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle. The Cake-tea is roasted before the fire until it becomes soft like a baby's arm and is shredded into powder between pieces of fine paper. Salt is put in the first boil, the tea in the second. At the third boil, a dipperful of cold water is poured into the kettle to settle the tea and revive the "youth of the water." Then the beverage was poured into cups and drunk. O nectar! The filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like waterlilies on emerald streams. It was of such a beverage that Lotung, a Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration,—all the wrong of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup—ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves. Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither."

For Sung tea preparation, kakuzo writes, “In the Sung dynasty the whipped tea came into fashion and created the second school of Tea. The leaves were ground to fine powder in a small stone mill, and the preparation was whipped in hot water by a delicate whisk made of split bamboo. The new process led to some change in the tea-equipage of Luwuh, as well as in the choice of leaves. Salt was discarded forever. The enthusiasm of the Sung people for tea knew no bounds. Epicures vied with each other in discovering new varieties, and regular tournaments were held to decide their superiority. The Emperor Kiasung (1101-1124), who was too great an artist to be a well-behaved monarch, lavished his treasures on the attainment of rare species. He himself wrote a dissertation on the twenty kinds of tea, among which he prizes the "white tea" as of the rarest and finest quality.

“The tea-ideal of the Sungs differed from the Tangs even as their notion of life differed. They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried to symbolise. To the Neo-Confucian mind the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself. Aeons were but moments—Nirvana always within grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all their modes of thought. It was the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was the completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man came thus at once face to face with nature. A new meaning grew into the art of life. The tea began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods of self-realisation. Wangyucheng eulogised tea as "flooding his soul like a direct appeal, that its delicate bitterness reminded him of the aftertaste of a good counsel." Sotumpa wrote of the strength of the immaculate purity in tea which defied corruption as a truly virtuous man. Among the Buddhists, the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and drank tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a holy sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which finally developed into the Tea-ceremony of Japan in the fifteenth century.”

Having read the Book of Tea, I can now watch japanese tea ceremonies online with a better understanding how the Japanese came to their peculiar tea preparation rituals and ceremonies.  Click to see tea ceremony Over the next few posts, we'll delve back into perriand's tea house, wabi sabi, taoist philosophy, and i guess architecture, the main subject of this blog.

Perriand and the Moon

One day before Paris fell to the Nazis, Charlotte Perriand boarded the Hakusan Maru on 15th June 1940. The journey, lasted 2 months and 6 days, that would take her to Japan, which according to Perriand, was “like the Moon”. With support from Junzo Sakakura, Perriand had been invited by the Japanese Ministry of Commerce and Industry to serve as an advisor to help increase furniture exports for Japan. Perriand had met Sakakura while they were both working for Le Corbusier’s between 1931-1936. 

grafitti on Hakusan Maru

When she arrived in Japan on August 21, 1940, she stayed at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Imperial Hotel. Then she traveled throughout Japan with Sori Yanagi and visited folk arts crafts people around the county. With the advent of WWII in Japan, perriand tried to return to France but was not able to because of a naval blockade. between 1942-46 she lived in exile in vietnam. There, she studied local woodworking and weaving techniques.

Wright's imperial hotel (now demolished)

During her long stay in Asia, perriand reinterpretated Japanese culture to ‘echo’ both tradition and modernity. A long line of artists and architects that includes monet, Van gogh, utzon, eames, wright, George lucas, and bowie have looked to japan for artistic inspiration. Perriand was no exception. In 1941, after seven months of traveling through Japan, Perriand and Sakakura produced an exhibition held at the Takashimaya department stores in Tokyo and Kyoto. They called it “Tradition, Selection, Creation.” It showcased her findings, recommendations and a number of designs she created. 

Like utzon, perriand re-interpreted Asian design through the selection and use of materials. While utzon substituted corrugated metal for clay tile, and concrete posts and beams for wood to create Bagsvaerd church, perriand substituted traditional Asian materials like bamboo for steel tubes to reinterpret her lounge chair she designed with Corbusier and jeanneret. 

Chaise rendered in bamboo

explorations in wood furniture

When she saw 17th century shelving at Katsura imperial villa in Kyoto, she “noted some shelves arranged on the walls, in the form of a cloud. This is where my cloud shape bookshelves came from, with aluminium connecting elements. A free form that gives rhythm to space and enhances the objects it supports. Starting from these elements, I could freely create entire walls or reduced combinations, or even furniture.” Her Japanese inspired shelving compositions go from sideboards and cupboards to bookshelves, with ground support or hung following symmetrical and asymmetrical plans, or even free-standing bookcases capable of structuring the architecture of a space. The components are the wooden oak shelves and anodized black aluminum vertical elements. Five different heights were studied in order to best organize various formats of objects and books. Each composition can be embellished with accessories such as aluminum trays and black, red and yellow plastic sliding trays which are functional and removable. The sliding panels of the bookcases can be customized in anodized aluminum, or in red, blue, green, yellow, grey, black and white. 

Katsura shelving

Sometimes, perriand, would look at non-architectural traditions and derive inspiration. in japan it is custom when receiving formal guests to serve them dinner in black lacquer trays. After they are used, they’re stacked. From this observation, perriand created individual tables black stamped out of a single sheet of anodized sheet aluminum. Her observations of stacking dinner boxes led her to devise stackable tables.

stacking lacquer tables

                               

Other times, perriand looked into performance like Bunraku puppet theater for ideas. In bunraku, the black attire of puppeteers renders them nonexistent. For her seating furniture around a dining table, perriand had the bent painted plywood chairs rendered in black to recede. She ‘echoed’ theater arts, and found ways to analogize furniture with theater characters. 

Bunraku puppet theater

Decades later, in 1993 at the request of her friend and ikebana master Hiroshi Teshigahara, perriand was commissioned to design a tea house for the UNESCO Japanese Cultural Festival. For this project, she frequently cited “The Book of Tea” by Kakuzo Okakura, which she had first discovered in 1930. The Book of Tea is a fascinating essay that touches upon tea, philosophy, history, and architecture. Tomorrow’s post will continue with Perriand’s tea pavilion design and the Book of Tea’s influence on Perriand. Click here to read Book of Tea.

Maison au bord de l'eau - Charlotte Periand

"Evolving from a competition for affordable weekend housing for the working class, organized by the magazine 'Larchitecture d'Aujour'hui, Maison au bord de l'eau is one of Charlotte Perriand's prefabricated architectural projects of the 1930's. Designed for mass production, to be delivered as a self-building kit, the house adapts to all kinds of terrain thanks to its stilts. it is made up of two symmetrical housing volumes opening onto a terrace. Simple devices are designed to match the house (regardless of the time of the year) so it will respond to the different states of mind that one has on the weekend. the important thing is to begin with a sound and sustainable construction. the terrace (rooms for play, hygiene, cooking, etc.) will be the true campsite of the house, and each visitor will bring surrounding nature into the house (rocks, tree trunks, plants, reeds, etc.) conventional or spiritual objects. thus people will have the chance to express themselves directly," explained Perriand.

Possibly in the hope of finding a buyer, perriand shifted her project toward a wealthier public, offering a certain amount of comfort, with sliding windows onto the terrace a stretched velum over the open space to collect rainwater. for eighty years, the design was unrealized till it was built for the exhibit at fondation louis vuitton. it was perfectly sited at the foot of the stepped water feature at the fondation.

Without analyzing her drawings, i suspect perriand's design followed her mentor's proportioning system "le modulor". Le Corbusier developed the Modulor while jobless during WWII when crossing the Atlantic by boat. In the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and Leon Battista Alberti, corbusier tried to uncover and apply mathematical proportions of the human body to improve the appearance and function of architecture. The system is based on human measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio and it was deployed at the Unite d'Habitation housing projects to regulate everything from concrete slab thicknesses, window mullions, arrangements, ceiling heights, railings, etc...  to the exact millimeter. 

When perriand came back from a stint in Japan and vietnam with a newborn daughter and asked to return to Corbusier's architecture studio, he replied, “I do not think it would be interesting, now that you’re a mother … to oblige you to be present in the atelier...  On the other hand, I would be very happy if you could contribute to the practical structural aspects of the settings which are within your domain, that is to say the knack of a practical woman, talented and kind at the same time.” corbusier would ultimately have Perriand develop the compact modular kitchens for the acclaimed unite d'habitation Marseille project.

Original drawing

                                          

Le modulor related to human activity

Le modulor graphically represented

unite d'habitation kitchen designed by perriand