Indo­chine Chair

The Indo­chine chair was first conceived of during Perriand’s time in Vietnam during World War II – envi­sioned as an adap­ta­tion of the designer’s collab­o­ra­tive LC7 swivel chair that was orig­i­nally designed as a dining chair for the Villa Church in 1928 and exhib­ited at the 1929 Salon d’Automne with a number of collab­o­ra­tive pieces with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jean­neret. While the forms are similar, Indo­chine features a frame constructed of wood rather than tubular steel.

Indo­chine was created in the 1940s while Perriand was living abroad during the war. A planned six-month trip to Japan in 1940 ulti­mately became six years away from Europe – two in Japan where she was even­tu­ally forced to leave as an ​“unde­sir­able alien” and the balance of four years in Vietnam. The Indo­chine chair was never mass-produced. Working care­fully with the designer’s archives, Cassina has recently intro­duced the Indo­chine chair with a frame in solid walnut or black-stained ash. Like Perriand’s LC7 chair from the 1920s, Indo­chine also swivels. Its back is padded with CFC-free polyurethane foam; its seat padded in CFC-polyurethane foam along with poly­ester wadding. Indo­chine is avail­able in an array of textile or leather upholstery.

We have noted here our favorite options: Ashwood stained black frame with the super Lux Pelle Natural 13Z360 natural leather or Natural Walnut frame with Pelle Natural 13Z361 tobacco leather. Pelle Natural is a natural full grain leather that has been aniline vat dyed. Imper­fec­tions and uneven­ness are char­ac­ter­is­tic of this type leather which has not been corrected in any way: This guar­an­tees the maximum degree of beauty and feel of true leather.