00s Gerrit Rietveld ‘zigzag’ chair for Cassina set/2

Gerrit Rietveld designed the zigzag chair in 1932. He did it for the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht. This design fits in with the Dutch art movement De Stijl. The zigzag chair has a high seat without armrests and is made of 18 millimeter thick solid wood boards glued together. The wood connections are beautiful, especially when you consider that the chair was designed in the 1930s. With the zigzag chair, the connection between the back and the seat is made with dovetail connections. The connection of the seat to the leg and that of the leg to the floor plate is made of mitred wood and reinforced by eight bolts and a corner slat each. Before this construction was chosen, Rietveld investigated several other constructions. First he made a steel frame with a fiberglass seat. Then wooden slats were screwed between two steel frames. The wooden corner constructions ultimately chosen are available in various variants. Rietveld designed various models based on the zigzag motif, including a children’s chair, an armchair and a chair with armrests. Rietveld had the zigzag chair made in series of twenty each.

The chair has been in production since 1934 and is still manufactured today, but by the Italian top brand Cassina, which has taken over the rights of many of Rietveld’s most famous designs.

This set of two pieces is from the 2000s and is in good condition consistent with age and use. The early zigzag chair showed the dovetails very visible. The more modern pieces have the same line but the dovetails are not visible anymore. In this chair the development of constructing methods and new techniques furniture is easy to follow in time.