Whodunit Wednesday: Rietveld

While in New York we visited the Brooklyn Museum. Besides wonderful paintings and amazing Egyptian and Syrian artifacts, there was a floor dedicated to the aesthetics of everyday items. The entrance to this floor had a display with an iron, a teapot and more. It was later in the exhibition that was even more interesting. 

One section was dedicated to chairs. There we found a few designed by Gerrit Rietveld. Mind you, not the well-known “Red and Blue Chair” which can be found in the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). We didn’t make it to the MoMA. But we did see this design. 

Gerrit Rietveld designed the chair in 1918 as an experiment, along with smaller versions of other things for his children. It is one of these that we also saw in the Brooklyn Museum. But it was that Rietveld made something simple and from simple materials that started changing the way designers were thinking. 

In 1930 he designed some worker’s houses in Vienna and then a bit later in Utrecht. Some of his architectural designs are also quite remarkable, but it is his chairs that people remember. It was another chair, made illegally (because he would not register during WWII) that many would recognize. This chair was made from one single piece of pressed plastic. 

Rietveld is a Dutchman anyone can remember if they think about remarkable chairs. He was born in 1888 and died in his birthplace, Utrecht, in 1964, just a few years after I was born.