During the Christmas holidays I was challenged by my architect brother-in-law to build a chair. It was a chair designed, by his favourite architect/furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, in 1918. The design was so iconic that all you have to do is Google ‘red and blue chair’ and you will find dozens of pictures of this, and works from the artistic movement ‘De Stijl’.

Rietveld was Dutch and was one of the leading figures in ‘De Stijl’ (The Style). He, Piet Mondrian, Theo Van Doesberg and others, were looking to find a simpler and more utopian way of living following the horrors of the First World War. The ‘red and blue chair’ was a simplified and reduced form of an upholstered armchair. Everything was stripped back to straight lines and intersecting planes. The black frame almost makes the chair seem to float in space. There are no nuts, bolts or screws – the piece is held together by hidden dowels. The colours reflect the influence of Mondrian.

I thought that recreating the chair (there is one in the Victoria and Albert Museum) would be an interesting project to get to grips with. I invited year 11s  Ben Winter, Tom Street, Alex Blunkell and Hayden Vaughan-Peacock to see if we could produce one in our lunch breaks and after school. A bit of research on the internet got me the plans and a book on how to construct Rietveld furniture. There is a company in Italy producing these chairs - £1,800 each! An original one from 1923 was sold by auction a couple of years ago for US$300,000. I found a timber merchant near Chelmsford and obtained beech and plywood (the original materials) planed and cut to the same dimensions used by Rietveld. I found that all the materials, including paint and varnish, cost just £75 per chair. My brother-in-law sponsored us the cost of the materials and so our project began!

We found that we were doing a lot of measuring, cutting and sanding. Everything had to be exact and fitted at the correct angles. It was fortunate that we had constructed a 1/3 scale model before beginning on the full-size version. Using the plans, on their own, was very confusing! The model helped us to orientate the rails and battens.

Every piece was sanded, given four coats of paint and four coats of clear gloss varnish. All the pieces were painted before being glued together. Gluing and clamping the frame was tricky, requiring a number of sets of hands to stop things falling apart. You might not think that glue and dowels would be sufficient to support a person’s weight! However, the design and joints are so clever the chair can hold even me (it did creek a little!)

I was not sure that the chair would be comfortable to sit on - no padding!! Although it is set very low to the ground, the angle of the seat and back are just right.

One thing we discovered is that there is nothing quite like having a go yourself, to help you understand just how a clever piece of design stands out. I would like to thank those students who gave up some of their free time to work on this project. I have a whole book of Rietveld furniture plans and a craving to try other styles (Arts and Crafts, maybe!) so with more volunteers, who knows what we will attempt next!

The Rietveld Chair will soon be on display at the school – I don’t think any other school in the country has one of these!

Mr S Pittuck

Art & Design Technology Technician

To see more photos from this project please click here.