Paravent Ambassade – Cassina

Designed by
Charlotte Perriand

A genuine architectural composition where blocks of canaletto walnut or oak are the ideal element to embellish a design piece that epitomizes exoticism and functionality.

In 1969, Charlotte Perriand designed a screen for the home of the Japanese ambassador to France. This allowed her to put her passion for the Far East to work. During her travels to the region, she gained many insights into the immense local artisan heritage. Charlotte Perriand, expert in designing furniture to meet the needs of its user, conceived the Paravent Ambassade screen to hide the door connecting the office to the salon de réception, a space that evoked a certain solemnity also because of the presence of a large sofa, over seven meters long, next to which the screen was placed.

Due to a lack of budget to construct the screen, Perriand had the brilliant idea of reusing the discarded solid rosewood left over from the production of her Tabourets which she had cut into rectangular blocks to be connected with threaded rods. The result is an artist’s puzzle, a small architectural composition made from 313 hand-processed solid wood blocks, assembled one by one, held together by vertical tension rods and separated by anchors. A masterpiece of perseverance that, thanks to the great number of blocks, makes it possible to mold the screen into increasingly diverse shapes and articulate its movement with sinuousness like that of a micro-mesh.