Vitra Miniature Multicoloured Wood. Dimensions: L 11 x D 14 cm x H
14.5 cm. Located in Weil am Rhein in Germany (near the Swiss border), the Vitra
Design Museum is a privately funded museum that showcases the unique design
collection of the Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra. The Vitra Design Museum
collection is one of the most important furniture design collections in the
world. It contains around 7,000 pieces of furniture, more than a thousand
lighting pieces, numerous archives and the inherited series of famous designers
such as Charles & Ray Eames, Verner Panton and Alexander Girard. The Vitra
Design Museum's collection of miniatures, which started more than 20 years
ago, is an illustration of the milestones in the history of design. This
collection encompasses the entire history of industrial furniture from the 1800s
to present day, creating a pathway through time leading to the creation of
modern seating, from historicism and Art Nouveau to Bauhaus and New Objectivity,
Radical Design and Postmodernism to present day. A magnificent collection of
emblematic works is presented to you. These chairs that have taken their place
in history all carry the memories of their times: Materials, shapes, colours…
They reveal the often forgotten dreams of their time, the (sometimes utopian)
aspirations of their designers, but above all to their vision of the world. The
chairs are reproduced on a one-sixth scale and faithfully replicate the original
historical model down to the smallest details in the design, material and colour
shade. This precise detail is also applied to the wooden grain, the reproduction
of the screws and the meticulous methods of handcrafting. These miniatures are
not only valuable collector's items, but are also an educational tool for
universities, design schools and architects. Rolf Fehlbaum, President of Vitra:
“We can deduce and understand an era, its social order, its materials, its
techniques and its taste by observing its chairs. I should point out that no
other everyday object offers such diversity.” The red and blue chair, or
Rietveld chair, is a chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1917–1923 for his
new furniture store. This chair is one of the first explorations of the De Stijl
artistic movement and of the 3D neoplastic aesthetic, shattering the history of
furniture, as well as the history of architecture. Keen on modernity,
abstraction and geometry, Gerrit Rietveld made an chair that went against all
the conventions of furniture in his time; it is made of wooden slats, has no
curves or colours and its structure is completely visible. The chair is made of
thirteen beechwooden slats. Rietveld assembled them with simple wooden dowels to
hide the joints. The boards used for the backrest, armrests and the sloping seat
do not touch each other. The various parts intertwine and the ends of the chair
extend further than necessary from a morphological point of view. The designer
clearly puts aesthetics ahead of comfort and this pioneering choice makes an
impression. Rietveld's „slatted chair“ was published in the magazine „De
Stijl“ in 1919 and through it, its author joined the movement. He then met
the painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), whose style, based on primary colours,
had an immediate impact on his work. In 1923, Rietveld painted the “slatted
chair”, which became the Red Blue Chair. He chose a chromatic distinction and
separates the constructive elements according to their function: the frame is
black, the backrest is red, the seat is blue and the ends are yellow. He sees
this chair as a 3D vision of Mondrian's work. And this is the version that has
become famous. The red and blue chair, originally designed in natural wooden in
1918 and painted in 1923, has undergone several transformations. It has changed
the vocabulary of both furniture and architecture. Rietveld had in mind an
industrial production of the chair, which never came to fruition. It remained a
series of single pieces. The Red Blue chair is now marketed by Cassina.
