Williams-Sonoma founder Chuck Williams dies at 100

(Image credit: Twitter.com/SFChronicle)

published 7 December 2015

Chuck Williams, the founder of upscale kitchen store Williams-Sonoma, died Saturday of natural causes. He was 100.

Born on Oct. 2, 1915, in Florida, Williams learned how to cook at his grandmother's restaurant in Ohio. A French food lover, Williams took a trip to France in the 1950s, and found items for sale that weren't available to home cooks in the U.S., like sauté pans and large stockpots, the Los Angeles Times reports. He decided then that he wanted to open a shop, and in the 1960s purchased a hardware store in Sonoma, California, that was transformed into Williams-Sonoma, selling specialized kitchen tools and equipment for novice and advanced home chefs.

After two years, he moved the store to Union Square in San Francisco, and started selling tart pans, terrines, juicers, garlic presses, and special pots and pans; what he couldn't find he had created especially for his store, including a wire basket used to hold eggs while they are boiled. Williams started his catalog business in the early 1970s, and today, there are more than 250 Williams-Sonoma stores in the U.S. and Canada. "When I started the store I didn't envision anything but a small shop," the former contractor and carpenter told The Washington Post in 1993. "I just did it because I liked doing it and liked doing things for other people."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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