Laurent Charles,
Son of Jean and Chrystiane, Laurent Charles was born in 1953, two and a half years after his sister, Marie-Joëlle. As children, they shared a bedroom in the family’s small apartment on rue Denis-Poisson, in Paris’s 17th arrondissement. Creativity was part of everyday life: their father, Jean, took them to the flea markets and the Village Suisse every weekend; at Christmas, their parents transformed the apartment with life-size sets. Architects, painters and artists were regular visitors. Jean and Chrystiane had been zazous in their youth, and passed on their love of jazz, especially Louis Armstrong. Marie-Joëlle remembers Laurent as perceptive, subtle and ambitious, with the keen sense of humour she associates with the Charles family.
A good student, encouraged by his parents, Laurent attended the Atmer courses and Franklin School. In 1962, he spent a year in Germany. He went on to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. His architectural training shaped the way he thought about forms in space, and would inform all his creative work for the maison. In 1964, his father developed multiple sclerosis. During the final years of Jean’s life, Laurent shared his room with him, an experience that left a deep impression. Jean died in 1971, aged forty-three.
In 1982, Laurent joined the family business, where his mother, Chrystiane, had led the maison as president and artistic director since Jean’s death. He became managing director and represented the fourth generation of the Charles family, following Ernest, Émile-Albert, then Jean, Jacques and Chrystiane. Trained as an architect, he brought a more geometric, graphic vocabulary to the collection, shaped by his taste for Art Deco.
Among the first models he designed were Athos, Archeo, Ténéré, Quasar and Linéa. In these pieces, bronze gives form to precise lines and carefully composed volumes, in designs where light and space matter as much as the object itself. Laurent extended this language across the collection, with pieces including Colonne Chapiteau, Liverpool, Lorenzo, Parnasse, Torchère Moderne, Kuneus and Tonneau. In Corolle, he returned to a motif created by his uncle, Jacques Charles. He designed for the maison until his death in 2011, and for nearly thirty years helped maintain the coherence of its repertoire.
