Chairs, Chair Design and Chair Designers
This Red Blue Lego Chair by Mario Monale Minale after Gerrit Rietveld for Droog Design is for sale at Phillips de Pury. Estimate £20,000-25,000.
Added September 14, 2009:
It appears I made an error in this post, the same error Phillips de Pury made: The designer is not Mario Monale, but Rotterdam based Mario Minale of the Minale Maeda studio.
Here is a detail of the chair:
modernity.se offers this creation of Dutch Architect/Designer Gerrit Rietveld for sale. I had no prior knowledge of it.
Modernity Se offers vintage 20th century design furniture, lighting, ceramics and glass. The emphasis is on Scandinavian design, by among others, Wegner, Juhl, Aalto, Mathsson, Jacobsen, Salto, Friberg, Wirkkala and Sarpaneva.
At a Christie’s auction in London a similar chair fetched $36,800 including buyer’s premium on April 29, 2009.
The reissue by Cassina of Gerrit Rietveld’s Utrecht or Metz Chair:
IMM Furniture Show
Cassina presented its Maestri collection which re-produces classical designs in new materials. The exclusive reproduction rights have been acquired by the company for Le Corbusier, Rietveld, Mackintosh and some more.
Via Core77.
Two original Zig Zag Chairs made from painted wood and brass hardware were sold at Auction at Sotheby’s. The chair unadorned and the cantilever concept broke new ground in furniture design. They were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and manufactured by Gerard van de Groenekan, De Bilt, in the Netherlands, and then Cassina Italy from 1971.
Zig Zag Chairs, $40,625, Sold at Auction, at Sotheby’s
Friday, December 19th, 2008
1938 Gerrit Rietveld Zig Zag Chair Sells for $40,625 | Daily Icon
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