Red and Blue Chair

Gerrit Rietveld, about 1918. Made by Cassina A chair built like a diagram: flat boards for seat and back, held in an open frame of square rails. It turned the De Stijl idea of primary colors and pure planes into something you could sit on. The colors came later. The earliest known example was stained beech with no paint, nobody knows exactly when it was first painted red, blue and yellow, and the name Red-Blue Chair was not used until 1958. Cassina obtained the rights to reproduce Rietveld's designs in 1972 and makes the authorized version.