Gerrit Rietveld had already used bent plywood for some of his chair designs in the 1920s and 1930s. Designs such as the Lounge Chair Wood of Charles and Ray Eames first put into production in 1946, renewed Rietveld’s interest in working with plywood after World War II. In the early 1950s Rietveld designed the lounge chair presented here, which is composed of six pieces of plywood, for the lobby of the household appliances manufacturer Tomado in Dordrecht, Netherlands. The model came to be known as the Danish Chair after it was exhibited in Denmark in 1952. Two design drawings dating from 1952 show that Rietveld also developed similar chairs using iron and aluminium. They were intended to be used in Tomado’s offices or to be manufactured by Tomado; however, only one iron prototype was realized.
Text: Ida van Zijl
