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tesy Rietveld by Rietveld.
Cour
Revising Rietveld
B y D a v i d S o k o l
On a gray, wind-whipped day in the Netherlands last November, I made
the 45-minute train ride from Amsterdam to Utrecht for a personal lesson
in Gerrit Rietveld. The architect and furniture designer, whose name is
synonymous with the early Dutch modern movement De Stijl, was born
in Utrecht in 1888. He set up a cabinetmaking business in the small city
in 1911 and practiced design and architecture here until his death in
1964. His best-known design is the Red and Blue chair of 1918, a severe
but colorful assemblage of wooden boards and bars that resembles a
Mondrian painting in three dimensions.
To ensure a thorough education, I had planned a rendezvous with
Rietveld’s great-grandson, Ries Seijler, whom I had met in New York in
2005 on the occasion of his launch of Rietveld by Rietveld, a company
devoted to disinterring Rietveld’s lesser-known furniture designs with
a series of limited production runs. “Gerrit Rietveld is more than the
Collection “Cassina I Maestri.” Photo Mario Carrieri. Red and Blue chair,” he had told me that May morning, and he had sug-
gested a trip to the Centraal Museum Utrecht, which possesses a massive
collection of Rietveld drawings, prototypes and artifacts that has long
been overshadowed by Red and Blue. At the time of our meeting, Seijler
Top Gispen did a mass-production run of Rietveld’s
and his second cousin, Egbert Rietveld, had produced seven of these
Mondial chair for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels,
designs through Rietveld by Rietveld.
with a polyester seat. Today the company, with
Rietveld by Rietveld as a distributor, makes six colors
Waiting in the museum’s café for Seijler primes the appetite for
of the chair entirely in aluminum, as Rietveld and his
total Rietveld immersion. Here, perfect rows of black-and-white Military
son, Wim, originally intended. tables and Military stools, designed in 1923 and now manufactured
Above Originally produced in Rietveld’s furniture
by Rietveld by Rietveld in its Franeker, Netherlands, facility, engage in
workshop, the Red and Blue (1918), his most famous a visual dialogue with the plush red, Cassina-produced Utrecht chairs,
chair, is now manufactured by Cassina.
a 1937 design, lounging in the corners. For a few moments, the café
72 www.modernismmagazine.com
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