Furniture - Rietveld Stichting

Furniture designs

In total Rietveld designed more than 350 pieces of furniture. For his houses and buildings he also designed many kinds of cabinets, such as closets, wall cabinets, kitchen cabinets, bookcases etc.

Yet only a few designs are widely known. The red-blue chair, on the other hand, became an icon over time, the leading three-dimensional object of De Stijl movement and Modernism.

A few examples of his furniture designs are given below and further reference is made to the extensive literature on this subject.

More about Rietveld’s vision

In 1925 Gerrit Rietveld handed over the furniture making business to his longtime employee Gerard van de Groenekan, who continued to make furniture based on Rietveld designs throughout his life. At that time Rietveld himself settled in Utrecht as an architect; however, he continued to design furniture all his life, which he considered to be beautiful exercises for spatial design that he often applied again in his architecture.

Early on, Rietveld had specific ideas about the essence of his designs and where they should lead: spatial experience, prefabrication for greater availability and soberness for optimising the use of space. In doing so, he increasingly made use of new techniques and materials.

Zitmeubels

RED-BLUE CHAIR, 1919

In 1919 Rietveld designed the ‘red-blue’ chair, which at the time was created from brown stained wood.

That same year the chair was published in the magazine De Stijl. Rietveld wrote that he wanted to make a piece of furniture that stands freely in the space, where the shape wins over the material and that is easily produce by machines. In the same commentary, Van Doesburg called the chair: “… a slender creature of space (…) unintentional, but unmerciful processing of open spaces”.

Rietveld achieved the spatiality with, among other things, continuous slats and connections with dowels.

The bevelled, later rectangular side panels disappeared with the versions from 1923 onwards.

In that year he painted the chair in the well-known primary De Stijl colours. That version could be seen in Utrecht at the exhibition ‘The Practical Housewife’. Possibly this exhibition was the direct cause for the colours of the chair. The exhibition interior, designed by Rietveld as a whole, may have led to the chair being matched to the space and in particular to the work of Van der Leck, who worked with primary colours as well.

This slatted armchair, as it was also called, was supplied by Rietveld in many colours, fitting in with the interior and according to the client’s wishes. For example, he made a monochrome red chair for himself and for the writer Til Brugman a completely white version, as part of an interior with colour design by Vilmos Huszár.

For Charley Toorop he made a sea-green and a pink version, both monochrome, and a grey version with yellow edges. Paul Lemon and Peter Alma were given a black chair with white edges.

Chairs

RED-BLUE CHAIR, 1919

In 1919 Rietveld designed the ‘red-blue’ chair, which at the time was created from brown stained wood.

Rietveld achieved the spatiality with, among other things, continuous slats and connections with dowels.

The bevelled, later rectangular side panels disappeared with the versions from 1923 onwards.

For Charley Toorop he made a sea-green and a pink version, both monochrome, and a grey version with yellow edges. Paul Lemon and Peter Alma were given a black chair with white edges.

Chairs with Matching Tables

ZIGZAG CHAIR, 1932, AND TABLE, 1935

This chair consists of four wooden planks, which are connected by a dovetail construction, a wedge, screws and bolts. The planks form two sharp corners and an almost 90 degree angle.

Rietveld used a Bruynzeel shelf that cost 90 cents at the time. He described it as a spatial design: “The chair leaves the space intact, a partition in the room. The space in front and behind is not closed off anywhere.” For him, that was the value of the chair, but he also thought it was a constructive joke. He made many variations of this model.

Rietveld made many variations of the Zigzag Chair. He also designed a matching table.

Tables and Cabinets

ELLING BUFFET, 1919

Rietveld made this buffet in 1919 for his friend and colleague Piet Elling. He himself later stated:

“The cabinet consists of a frame of sticks, rules we’ll call it, all of the same size. (…) But I didn’t want to close that cupboard with a flat door, I closed it with a composition of planes that are placed spatially against each other in the same three dimensions of the space as the frame itself, and that’s why you can see the wonderful shape of that door. The drawer, which is also composed of planks and slats, is all of the same kind. And now I would have liked to make this cabinet asymmetrical because I felt that this symmetry was actually too much bound to the mass, so I would have preferred to place it freely in the space, but that was still too difficult at the time, I was happy that I could bring it this far and so I made it the same on both sides.”

The buffet is depicted in the magazine De Stijl from 1920.

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