This crate chair design is nothing exciting but the idea of making crate wood into usable products is what excites me. Gerrit Rietveld, a renowned Dutch furniture designer and architect first introduced crate wood furniture in 1934. During the time of economic crisis people couldn't afford to waste anything. I like Rietveld ideology that beauty should be accessible to everyone and simplicity is a characteristic of what is true, given the form of crate furniture. The present version of crate chair is made with beech wood and comes in flat pack with various colours to choose from. The junior version is also available, reproduced in the size of 2/3 of the original model. I think the bold colours option make the piece more attractive and more fun. I can see them sit beautifully in my garden or any outdoor areas.
Rietveld’s lifelong passion was to make objects with aesthetic qualities available to a wider public and this is reflected in his growing enthusiasm for rudimentary construction with uncompromising simplicity responding to the harsh economic climate during the early 1930s. In these years of economic crisis, many products were packaged in crates in order to be shipped safely; after which the crates were usually discarded despite quality base materials being used. In 1934 Rietveld constructed the earliest pieces of furniture out of ‘crate wood’ constituted of the packing materials which he re-used.