Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld is one of modernism's most singular figures - a leading light of the De Stijl movement and designer of some of the modern age's most iconic pieces of furniture.
The Utrecht chair, named after the city of his birth, was designed in 1935 and reveals Rietveld's fascination with distilling a piece of furniture to its structural basics, revealing a form that is at once unconventional and soundly rational.
This was one of only a few of Rietveld's upholstered designs that were taken into production. It was first sold by Amsterdam manufacturers Metz & Co in 1936, in an edition covered in dark brown canvas and finished with a visible festoon stitch. After the war Metz and Co issued the chair in a felt with the signature distinctive white stitching. The design and was revived by Cassina in 1988, a century after Rietveld's birth.