Rare SE20 chair manufactured by ’t Spectrum Bergeyk 1980s. This late experimental Visser design from 1988 was only manufactured as a very limited production (20 or so?) making it a real collector or museum piece and prime example of Dutch postmodern design. It was manufactured in various colourways – this chair is a vibrant cobalt blue.
In superb hardly used condition.
See: Boijmans Museum collection / literature: ‘tSpectrum Moderne meubelvormgeving en naoorlogs idealisme. Uitgeverij 010, Rotterdam 2002.
It is easy to comprehend how subsequent Dutch design evolved into an even more simplified and pared-down version of such furniture as this. There are clear visual similarities to Rietveld or De Stijl.
chromed steel tube with leather slung seat. 48.5 wide x 67 deep x 73cm high.
Wim van den Bergh is an architect, writer, and professor of Housing and Design at RWTH Aachen.
An 80s homage to early modernism this is a highly elegant and rare chair: Only 30 examples of this chair were ever produced (by hand) of which the first prototype was commissioned by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1981.
De Rotterdamse Meubelfabriek CH Eckhart (circa 1920s)
Dutch Hague School / Amsterdam School Art Deco bookcase.
190 x 33 x 134cm high.
Mahogany and coromandel woods. A large beautifully made bookcase with two adjustable shelves on each side. Minor signs of age and use. This bookcase came out of a private house with several pieces made by the same company.
Jan Slothouber & William Graatsma (NL. Mid-c20th) Five original modular cubes from the 1970s. Laminated plywood. . The Dutch duo Slothouber & Graatsma established themselves from the 1950s as artist/designers with the cube form as their key motif around which they developed various principles of cubic construction alongside multiples and variations thereof. Despite its restrictions they admired the cube for its clarity of form. They applied their thinking around it to a variety of objects, and artworks from small jewellery-scale 3d models and games to larger installation works. Highly driven personalities, they considered themselves as discoverers of ‘the many applications of the democratic system of cubics’; a system that would ostensively act to counter the rise of the expressive individualism in post-WWII culture. (They later established the CCC_the Center for Cubic Constructions as a forum for promoting their ideas). Due to their diverse and multidisciplinary output they were never to become global names – But they were a highly respected creative team (representing The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 1970) and in 1965 the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam honoured them with the exhibition ‘Vier kanten: maat, vorm, kleur, letter’ (Four sides: size, form, colour, letter). Donald Judd for one was a great admirer of their work.
[merzbau] 