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Crate desk
designer:
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld
year: c.1934
manufacturer:
Metz & Co.
Painted pine
39.5"w x 23.5"d x 28"h
". . .a piece of furniture of fine wood, made wholly according to traditional methods, is shipped in a crate to prevent damage and breakage. Someone receiving such a crate at home says, at most: well packed. But it has never been established that such a crate represents a freely rendered method of carpentry aimed straight at its goal. The plain materials of which it is composed make it stronger than its precious contents. . .Therefore, there must finally be someone who chooses the crate instead of the piece of furniture."
Literature:
Complete Reitveld Furniture, Voge, pg. 88-89 fig 136
estimated value: 7000-9000 US$
sale date: 12.07.2003
location: Chicago
lot number: 222
sales title: Modernist 20 Century
[from wright online auction catalog archive]
"There it stood, this immense, playfully improbable checkerboard box, sharply delineated against a gray winter sky, hovering on angled stilts above an otherwise nondescript city street. Way above it. The box is only 30 feet high, but there's a gap of maybe 50 feet between its underside and the roofs of the four-story buildings below."