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A Visit to the Chuck Williams Culinary Arts Museum

The lavish display of gleaming copper molds at the Chuck Williams Culinary Art Museum.

The lavish display of gleaming copper molds at the Chuck Williams Culinary Art Museum.

 

You don’t often get to meet a legend. But I did in 2005.

I remember climbing the stairs to the top floor of the flagship Union Square San Francisco Williams-Sonoma to meet for the first time, its revolutionary company founder who single-handedly changed so much about the way we now cook.

Chuck Williams was about to turn 90 and his cookware company about to celebrate half a century.

A genteel, elegant figure, dapper in a sports jacket, tie and sweater vest, he was still editing every cookbook Williams-Sonoma published then. And his appearance anywhere in the store would provoke a rock star’s reaction, with starry-eyed shoppers coming up to pay their respects.

The new museum is on the second floor of the CIA at Copia.

The new museum is on the second floor of the CIA at Copia.

He started the original Williams-Sonoma in, yes, Sonoma. He filled it with French cookware he found on his travels, items that were well made and served a real purpose: hammered copper pots, gleaming molds of all kinds, coffee makers built to last a lifetime, and the first food processors. In so doing, he introduced to us all sorts of marvels we never knew we needed but now can scarce live without.

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