OAK CABINET, 1911
For his marriage to Vrouwgien Hadders in 1911 Rietveld made a cabinet, table, bench and linen cupboard. All very sleek designs, which were unusual for that time. The influence of Berlage can be recognised in them. Rietveld himself indicated that his teacher P.J. Klaarhamer opened his eyes to construction and dimensions. The one for the cupboard is based on one meter, a measurement that Rietveld often applied in his architecture afterwards.
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.
SCHRÖDER SMALL TABLE, 1923
Asymmetric small table, designed for the interior of the Rietveld Schröder house.