enturi.
Collection “Cassina I Maestri.” Photo Oliviero V Collection “Cassina I Maestri.” Photo Nicola Zocchi.
was just a young man envisioning a career in the Dutch merchant
marine. His grandmother, Rietveld’s oldest daughter, Elisabeth, repre-
sented the family. “She asked Cassina if they would produce more, but
of course, Cassina has its own collection,” Seijler recalls. “It can’t devote
itself entirely to Rietveld.” In 1995, the family created a three-person
board to distribute royalties, and in that period, Seijler came to shore
to start a career in contract furniture, founding his own company, Trio
Meubelen, in 2001.
Frustration drove his decision to found Rietveld by Rietveld. “We have
Rietveld’s furniture in our home and we use it,” he says. “Yesterday, for
example, I was visiting with my father and we sat on two Zig-Zags.
People see these works at exhibitions and say, ‘Oh, that’s nice, eh?’”
Seijler clasps his hands like an enthralled museumgoer. “Not only did
tesy Rietveld by Rietveld.
we want people to know that Rietveld created more than the Red and
Blue and the Zig-Zag, but he designed more than 200 different pieces of
furniture. We also want to get more of it in real people’s hands.”
Having established himself as Rietveld’s spiritual heir, Seijler became
chair of the family board in 2002. One of his first acts was to take
up his grandmother’s request. After a failed attempt at licensing the
forgotten designs with the manufacturer Gelderland (among other
stumbling blocks, media accounts interpreted the deal as a hostile act
ork/Pictoright, Amsterdam. Cour
toward Cassina), Seijler and Egbert Rietveld decided to take matters into
their own hands. The cousins examined the archival drawings at the
Centraal Museum as well as those at the Rotterdam-based Netherlands
Architecture Institute to select the first five models to produce.
The Steltman (1963), a postwar design made for a jeweler of the
same name, was the first choice. The asymmetrical chair has been
described as an echo of Rietveld’s earliest experiments in open structures
tists Rights Society (ARS), New Y
and spatiality, but it is frankly anthropomorphic, as well, suggesting a
© Ar
kneeling man; only two were made for the original client. However, it
Above An original Rietveld drawing of the design that Rietveld
by Rietveld today produces as Bench Hillebrandt. While the bench
made the cut for sentimental reasons: it had long been a favorite of
clearly shares a common language and spirit with the “Crate”
both Seijler and Egbert Rietveld. “Some people say this is not a chair, it’s
series do-it-yourself idea (opposite), Rietveld produced a version of architecture,” says Seijler. “But when I was a little child, I always called
the seat for the Hillebrandt family around 1940.
this the Letter Chair. When you look at it one way, it appears as an F.
Top left The 1934 Zig-Zag is now produced in cherry by Cassina.
Sometimes it takes the shape of an E.” The chair even appears in the
Top right Metz & Co. showed Rietveld’s first upholstered
Rietveld by Rietveld logo.
furniture piece in 1937, two years after it was designed. Today
The second chair to be produced was the Berlin (1923). It was
Cassina produces the Utrecht chair and sofa in a variety of colors. Rietveld’s first foray into asymmetry, a feature that became a defining
74 www.modernismmagazine.com
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