Gerrit Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1888, and apprenticed to his father to become a joiner, eventually setting up his own furniture workshop in 1917. He is well known as a furniture designer and the architect of the famous Rietveld Schroder house, and was a core member of the De Stijl movement in Dutch design and art.

One of his most famous designs, the Red and Blue chair designed in 1917, started life as an attempt to create furniture that could be mass produced easily, as all of the constituent parts are simple sawn struts which required minimal processing and assembly . This aim was also expressed in the 1919 “Buffet” side table shown below. Rietveld would later add bright colour to his furniture, inspired by De Stijl painter Piet Mondrian, however the pieces that interest me most are those that are the prototypes left in their natural oak finish. Both the chair and side table shown are very architectural looking pieces and the structure of the furniture is left on show as part of the design. Both pieces are fairly busy in terms of the lines on show, but the composition of the lines is well balanced, and the pieces look and feel dynamic, and almost mechanical.

The De Stijl influences can be seen in both pieces. In De Stijl the most basic lines and colour are used to form an image, and in these pieces the simplified individual components normally hidden in furniture are represented as individuals, interconnecting to form the whole.