Chuck’s father’s auto-repair shop went bankrupt in the Depression. He moved the family to California, then abandoned them. Chuck’s older sister, Marie, was hit by a baseball and killed at 19. And after his mother returned to Florida, the boy, abruptly on his own, got work on a date ranch in Palm Springs and went to high school. He later became a window dresser at a Los Angeles department store.

A thyroid condition kept him out of military service in World War II, but he got a job at Lockheed and worked for four years as an airplane mechanic in East Africa and India. Returning to Los Angeles, he took a golf trip with two friends to the old mission town of Sonoma, 35 miles north of San Francisco, and he fell in love with it. He settled there in 1947, built a home and began renovating houses for other people.

In 1953 Mr. Williams went to Europe, spending two weeks in Paris restaurants and kitchen supply shops. He was fascinated by the food and equipment, which was available to any French cook.

There were heavy sauté pans, huge stockpots, fish poachers, bakeware, bains-marie, superior knives in many sizes and an array of cutting, dicing and grating tools. And there were pantry items: balsamic vinegar, olive oils, sea salt, exotic peppercorns, Madagascar vanilla and Italian pastas, all but unknown in American kitchens.

Back in Sonoma, he bought an old hardware store, remodeled it and stocked it with items he had seen in Paris, most of them unavailable outside restaurant supply stores in this country. He paid close attention to displays and effusively answered customers’ questions. Many San Franciscans had vacation homes in sleepy Sonoma, and business was good. He grossed $35,000 the first year.

He moved to San Francisco in 1958 and opened Williams-Sonoma on Sutter Street. The store was a sensation, and he handled it himself: building shelves, doing the books, fixing plumbing, traveling to Europe, ordering merchandise, wrapping packages, even sweeping the sidewalk. What customers found inside were racks of gleaming copperware, crystal stemware, imported pastas, hundreds of items and a proprietor who seemed to know everything about French cooking.