Pierre Charpin

The furniture, objects and exhibition designs of French designer Pierre Charpin (born 1962) deal with notions of landscape and autonomy, humor and surprise, poetic presence and minimalism. He speaks of them in terms of “receptors” rather than “emitters,” envisaging “objects primarily as forms and only on a second level as functional purposes.” Creating limited-edition series in association with Galerie Kreo (Paris), working with world-famous glass workshop CIRVA in Marseille or Sèvres porcelain studios, Pierre Charpin is active in both industrial and experimental design. In 2005, he was elected Creator of the Year at the Paris Salon du meuble and Grand-Hornu Images (Belgium) organized a retrospective of his work in 2011. Richly illustrated with both objects and drawings, this monograph gathers together essays by former Centre Pompidou Head of Design Françoise Guichon and design critic Alessandra Fanari, a conversation with design historian Marco Romanelli and an index of Charpin’s creations of the past 25 years.