Rietveld Zig Zag Variation 1 – Old Ladder Back by Garry Knox Bennett
I found Garry Knox Bennett‘s Gallery of Chairs. He likes to create series of chairs. Gerrit Rietveld has inspired Garry to a series of Zig Zag variations. I really like all of them. Rather than creating one very lengthy post, I’ll feature each variation separately. I do apologize for mixing up the sequence…because the original sequence is not entirely clear from GKB’s site:-)
In an interview by Stefano Catalani (SC) Garry (GKB) explains the inspiration the Zig Zag has given him:
SC: You started with the Zigzag chairs. You made sixteen chairs drawing inspiration from the design of Gerrit Rietveld’s 1934 Zig-Zag Chair . It’s a quite spartan chair in its original concept. What captured your interest about this model?
GKB: I’ve always looked at that chair as kind of a joke. I thought, “What a dumb chair this is!” And when I made the first, the ladder-back chair, which started out as kind of tongue-in-cheek, I sat in it, and it was a surprisingly comfortable little chair! I mean it works really well. You can get your feet behind it, when you tuck your feet under yourself; there’s no stretcher that gets in the way. It’s a good height: 18 inches, pretty standard. And it’s got some spring to it; it’s got a little limber to it. So then I have to admit, I actually fell in love with the model. From then on, I was fairly serious. Obviously I’m using puns in a lot of the titles, or a lot of visuals, but I got pretty serious about it.
After all various Dutch museums have declared 2010 to be the Rietveld Year and they will have several Rietveld designs on display. In addition, if Gerrit Rietveld would have been alive now and would have lived in the US, he might as well be known as Garry Reitveld, because Garry’s webmaster consequntly mis spelled Rietveld’s name:-)
Secretly I do hope one of the Dutch museums sees fit to get this Zig Zag collection on display for the Rietveld year.