Chairs, Chair Design and Chair Designers
Designer: Michael Thonet
c. 1870
Description: Rocking chair with a dark wooden frame, and cane seat and back.
History: This is a replica of the 1870 design. The rocking chair was relatively unheard of in Europe until Thonet designed this piece.
Museum Collections: (University of Dundee)
The Future Dutch Finance Minister Witteveen in the kids chair Rietveld made for him
By Editor Design.nl / 04-12-2008
The Centraal Museum in Utrecht and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam have jointly acquired the Gerrit Rietveld child-chair designed in 1918 and produced in 1921-22. The piece makes it possible to track Rietveld’s development towards the Red Blue Chair, an icon in Dutch art history, much more closely.
Gerrit Rietveld (Utrecht 1888-1964) is one of the major innovators of 20th century architecture and design. This child-seat is considered a key element in his oeuvre. Its shape and colour scheme precede the famous Red Blue Chair, which was also designed in 1918, but not painted in the well-known colours until 1923.
In 1919, Magazine De Stijl published the design of the child-seat. Rietveld gave an explanation of the colour-scheme (at the time green, light green and red) and the special construction qualities focussing on the experimental wood connections and dowels. He designed the featured seat for the first child of H.J. Schelling who was born in 1918. That chair is now lost.
No other furniture from this crucial period in Rietveld’s development was known to still exist. Then in 2006, a second child-seat appeared at an auction. This chair was made for Hendrikus Johannes Witteveen, the future minister of Finance who was born in 1921. It is almost identical to the chair owned by the Schelling family. Only one picture of the chair, showing Witteveen as a child sitting in it, survives.
Considering the date of 1921, the seat gives us essential information about the development of Rietveld’s use of colour in that period. He was experimenting with primary colours, which is of great importance for research into his early development. Few works from that period can be dated with such precision.
As far as it is known, this child-seat is the only piece of furniture left from this important period. During this time he lets go of the simple, closed shapes of his early works which were inspired by among others Frank Lloyd Wright and Berlage. Spatial quality becomes the essence of his revolutionary designs where he effortlessly connects to the avant-garde movement, De Stijl.
The chair is on display from today in the “125 Great Loves†exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Design.nl
See for a remake this Chair Blog Post
Chairs
Catalogue of the Delft Faculty of Architecture Collection
Written by Otakar Mácel, Sander Woertman, Charlotte van Wijk
Photography by Hans Schouten
Designed by Joost GrootensEnglish
272 pp / 240 x 170 mm / paperback
price € 24.50
ISBN 978 90 6450 619 2
published 2008, recentComprising the effort of more than a century of collecting chairs, the Faculty of Architecture of the TU Delft can pride itself on having one of the major furniture collections in the Netherlands. Set up as an educational tool, the collection has offered knowledge about materials, construction and typology to students and designers. In the catalogue, the entire collection of over 240 chairs is presented for the first time. Each object is accompanied by images and a thorough description. Also, the book offers comprehensive texts on key designs in the collection, showing the diversity of the collection which consists of world famous designs, 17th, 18th and 19th century designs, everyday household chairs and rare pieces of furniture that have never been published before. Among the designers presented are Verner Panton, Gerrit Th. Rietveld, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Jean Prouvé, Marcel Breuer and Droog Design.
Via 010 publishers
Lucky the collection was not burnt when the faculty building burnt down.
Thonet Rocking Chair no 3. Almost a baroque one!
La Stanza del Re. is an antique dealer based in Milan, Italy. He specializes in Thonet and other 19th century – beginning of 20th century bentwood chairs.
This brings the Thonet specialists featured here to three. The other two being Basel, Switzerland, based Dieter Staedli and Paris, France, based Manuel Guillaume of Au bon Usage
Update:
Commenter Geert Vanhoutte kindly informed us:
Sadly enough the owner of the shop “La stanza del Re” in Milan has closed his shop and sold all his pieces. There’s another antique store specialized in Thonet that is not mentioned here: Ulrich Fries, Bleibtreustrasse 53, 10623 Berlin. He’s been selling antique Thonet furniture for many decades and has the largest stock in the world I think. Well worth a visit ! It’s a pity he doesn’t have a website. There’s also an antique store in Vienna “City-Antik”, but they are only selling over-restored (ruïned) pieces at overrated prices…
Via Design Boom