is overrun by a group of schoolchildren, who unwittingly treat the stools like so
much playground equipment. Although based on a commission for a local geriatric
home, Military is clearly suited for all ages. The ensemble provides a window into
Rietveld’s prescience about furniture’s role in contemporary life.
Seijler, a towering teddy bear of a man, finally arrives. But the café transforms
from appetizer to tease: museum curator and Rietveld expert Ida van Zijl, who
co-authored the massive 1992 reference Gerrit Rietveld: The Complete Works, hasn’t
come to work that day. The hangar-like warehouse containing the treasure trove of
untrumpeted Rietveld designs — off limits. What about the museum’s display collec-
tion? The exhibition is traveling.
So Seijler clears out some free space in his portable office of a Volvo and we
shuttle to the east side of Utrecht to visit the landmark Rietveld Schröder House of
1923. The house is more than a Rietveld object writ large. The flexible interior, in
which just about every wall is moveable, lends meaning to the dynamic exterior, as
well as to the furniture designed around the same time: the mind can animate these
surfaces, transpose them or make them fly away.
Indeed, if it were possible to foment revolution in just seven rails, six posts, two struts,
two boards and a series of dowel pins and nails, then Rietveld’s Red and Blue chair did just
that. The chair, which was, in fact, produced in a variety of color schemes, encapsulated
Collection “Cassina I Maestri.” Photo Mario Carrieri.
both the functionalist teachings that inaugurated the Bauhaus the following year and the
stripped-down, geometry-as-ornamentation approach of the Czech Cubists. As conceptu-
ally seductive as it was stylish, the chair propelled its maker into the De Stijl community —
and perhaps even helped crystallize the nascent movement, whose members published
it in their eponymous magazine almost immediately. But the chair’s influence eventually
reached well beyond De Stijl, to become an icon of the larger modern movement.
Surely, Red and Blue is the embodiment of simplicity. This composition of easily
sourced and manufactured parts dissects furniture anatomy; it is an abstraction of a
chair that diminishes the boundaries between interior and exterior. But what makes
the design truly epiphanic is the way its rails and posts fly out beyond one another
into space, a trope that is echoed in the intersection of the back and the seat. These
dynamic corners suggest that all objects are but series of potential lines and planes,
figments of the imagination — a commentary on the European psyche between the
wars, perhaps, or the fragility of the modern condition. More practically speaking, Red
and Blue’s appearance of tenuousness makes for an active relationship between the
sitter and the seat, encouraging him to consider the chair’s sturdiness, test its comfort,
ponder its cultural origins and reassess all other chairs he has tried before.
tesy Rietveld by Rietveld.
“Red and Blue was the start of his new way of thinking about chairs,” Seijler says, a
Cour
reconsideration of the very nature of furniture that extended to his designs for the Zig-
Zag (1934) and Utrecht chairs and the Divan side table (1922–23), now better known
as Schroeder 1. The cantilevered wooden Zig-Zag, a feat of engineering, is a wink
toward the tubular-steel production that had come into vogue, while Utrecht proves
that Rietveld’s vision was not limited to hard surfaces, but could be rendered in cush-
iony planes. The asymmetrical, differently colored pieces of Schroeder 1, meanwhile,
celebrate the independence of the componentry as well as the sum of the parts.
The Italian furniture company Cassina has held the exclusive rights to produce
these furniture designs since 1971. At the time of the contract negotiations, Seijler
Top A 1923 creation is the stained and lacquered wood Divan table, now produced
by Cassina and known as the Schroeder 1.
Center A jeweler in the Hague commissioned Rietveld to create a mirror-image pair
of Steltman chairs for his shop in 1963, as part of a renovation that the designer
oversaw. Rietveld filled only a few additional Steltman orders before his death the
following year. Originally upholstered in white leather, today Rietveld by Rietveld
produces the chair without cladding to reveal the oak frame, in natural, white, and
black colorways.
Bottom Rietveld produced the black-and-white Berlin chair in his workshop when it was
introduced in 1923. It was designed for the De Stijl room that he and Vilmos Huszar created
tesy Rietveld by Rietveld.
at an exhibition in Berlin and was part of Rietveld by Rietveld’s launch collection. Cour
www.modernismmagazine.com 73
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124