image via Christie's
In addition to designing (along with Truus Schröder) and building one of my favorite houses, Gerritt Rietveld designed and built furniture. In fact, he started his career in early Modernism in furniture. He wanted his designs to be simple and simple to build, at one point presenting plans for making furniture from shipping pallets. One of my fave pieces of his is his sideboard, sometime referred to as the Elling Sideboard, designed and first built in 1919. Piet Elling commissioned the piece for his apartment which, unfortunately, burned down, taking the original with it. Rietveld oversaw the reconstruction of the piece in 1952 and continued to build (or have it built) in the ensuing years. Casina makes a "Death Star" version with a price tag of ~$35,000.
Casina's "Death Star" version.
Made of birch, much of the strength and structure sources from dowels and glue. The piece is airy and cloudlike with extended planes typical of the de Stijl Movement that influenced Modernism, particularly Mies van der Rohe. The piece itself, as well as de Stijl, was influenced to a degree by Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese furniture.
Since Rietveld was a little punk rock, he wanted to create designs for the people that could also be built by the people. Accordingly, there are a couple books, somewhat similar, that provide plans on how to build his furniture.
I had bought the one above but then could not find it, so I bought what I thought was a replacement but was a completely different version of the same book:
This turned out to be a happy accident because there are different pieces of furniture in the second version above. Go figure.
Since I am writing this post, in large part, to solicit a furniture maker to make this piece for us for the cabin, I have provided scans of the plans below. Enjoy!
image via Christie's
Photos below from Artsy:
more links:
https://toolsforworkingwood.com/store/blog/1164
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