Armchair

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection, D84.154.1

Rietveld was a Dutch architect known for his furniture designs as well as his buildings during his long career. His first known plywood chair was designed in the 1920s. The legs and seats of this this much later plywood design, treated as separate, overlapping elements to form the strong structure, are reminiscent of the earlier plywood furniture by Marcel Breuer for the Isokon Furniture Company in London, as well as the plywood furniture of Ray and Charles Eames of the 1940s.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, photo: Giles Rivest.