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Rietveld joint

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In furniture making, a Rietveld joint, sometimes called a Cartesian node, is an overlapping joint of three battens in the three orthogonal directions.

It was famously used in the Red and Blue Chair.

Whereas Vantongerloo's early De Stijl sculptures explore volume, the Rietveld joints explore directions.[1]

In Gerrit Rietveld's furniture, many of these joints were doweled, meaning that the adjoining faces were connected with glued wooden pins. The first two connections were made by boring a hole about 1 mm deeper than the dowel length, but the third connection were made with a longer dowel, boring through a batten, leaving a circular mark that had to be painted over.[2]

Notes

  1. ^ Overy, P: De Stijl, pp 73-75.
  2. ^ Drijver et Niemeijer: How to construct Rietveld furniture, p 15.