Gerrit Rietveld’s Crate Chair (1934) introduced me to a Modernism that I could understand. The first time I saw it was in a generic book about 20th century design not long before my dad dragged me down to the garage when he recognised my enthusiasm for simple carpentry to encourage a practical ‘trade’. “We can make one of those” he said, before creating a cutting list based on the photo - not actual plans - and sending me to the wood yard. I didn’t enter the trade of carpentry, unfortunately, but the trade of design. I visited the Schröder House the year after. It was a need rather than a want. I had to experience his world. The flexibility of walls, of furniture; the flexibility of air and space, corner windows; walls that folded away and altered the purpose of a room. Now, 13 years after friends’ parents were asking me to make Crate Chairs for their gardens (by that time I’d found the actual plans, and realised how off my dad and I were with our ‘educated’ guesses) I still return to Rietveld to solve all my problems. The things you can’t see in photos still set me off. Descriptions of colours, of movement - of a wall made from air. Custom objects that didn’t survive, bar personal recollections: prototypes, experiments, a glass-cabinet encased radio. A carpenter’s Modernism starts in the workshop, and maybe his vision was mass-production, (which never happened in his lifetime and I think of him better for it), but it was created for human interaction. No ideals of an unrealistic homogeny, or a futuristic Utopia. Just “construction methods that get straight to the point.”
-Abel Sloane