SAN FRANCISCO — Chuck Williams, who founded the Williams-Sonoma empire and ushered in an era of aspirational culinary retailing, has died. He was 100.
The retailer of high-end home goods said Williams died peacefully of natural causes Saturday.
Williams opened his first Williams-Sonoma store in Sonoma, California, in 1956 inspired by a trip to Paris three years earlier. A lover of cooking and entertaining, he wanted U.S. professional chefs and home cooks to have access to high-quality cookware and tools.
“I couldn’t get over seeing so many great things for cooking, the heavy pots and pans, white porcelain ovenware, country earthenware, great tools and professional knives,” Williams told The Washington Post in 2005.
He refurbished the store off Sonoma’s town square, covering the floor with black and white checkerboard tiles and painting the walls a bright yellow that he’d seen in pictures. He built custom shelving to display individual pots and pans and crafted a simple logo with the words “Williams” and “Sonoma” in block letters over a woodcut illustration of a pineapple — a symbol of hospitality.
The shop was such an enormous success that in 1958, he relocated to a 3,000-square foot store in San Francisco, next to the city’s bustling Union Square shopping district.
Julia Child’s landmark 1961 cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and her cooking show on television sent even more cooks interested in French cuisine to Williams-Sonoma and by 11 years later, that store had expanded to twice its original size and the catalog, first published in black and white in 1958, was flourishing.
Born Oct. 2, 1915 in northern Florida, Mr. Williams’ earliest memories were of hand-mixing egg whites for divinity fudge and lemon meringue pies with his grandmother, who once owned her own restaurant.
Williams’ family moved to Palm Springs, California, during the Great Depression. He later relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked as a window dresser at the I.Magnin and Bullocks department stores. During World War II, he traveled to India and Africa, exploring the food, drinks and unique cooking techniques and tools of those parts of the world.
After returning home, he visited Sonoma and decided to move there and start a home construction business before venturing into the world of high-end cooking ingredients and home goods.
“With his impeccable taste and unique talent for selecting the right products at the right time, he built a powerful brand that inspired a cultural revolution around food and had immeasurable impact on home and family life around the world,” said Janet Hayes, Williams-Sonoma brand president.
He sold the company in 1979, but he remained closely involved with it.
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