A Rietveld joint, also called a Cartesian node in furniture-making, is an overlapping joint of three

batten A batten is most commonly a strip of solid material, historically wood but can also be of plastic, metal, or fiberglass. Battens are variously used in construction, sailing, and other fields. In the lighting industry, battens refer to linea ...

s in the three orthogonal directions.

Description

A Rietveld joint is an overlapping joint of three

s in the three orthogonal directions. It was a prominent feature in the

Red and Blue Chair ''The Red and Blue Chair'' is a chair designed in 1917 by Gerrit Rietveld. It represents one of the first explorations by the De Stijl art movement in three dimensions. History The original chair was constructed of unstained beech wood and wa ...

that was designed by

Gerrit Rietveld Gerrit Rietveld (24 June 1888 – 25 June 1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect. Early life Rietveld was born in Utrecht on 24 June 1888 as the son of a joiner. He left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at ni ...

. 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 was made with a longer dowel, boring through a batten, leaving a circular mark that had to be painted over.{{cite book, last1=Drijver , last2=Niemeijer , title=How to construct Rietveld furniture , year=2001 , page=15 , isbn=9789068682809

History

Rietveld joints are inextricably linked with the early 20th century Dutch artistic movement called

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a bod ...

(of which Gerrit Rietveld was a member), a movement whose aims included ultimate simplicity and abstraction. This led to the movement's three-dimensional works having vertical and horizontal lines that are positioned in layers or planes that do not intersect, thereby allowing each element to exist independently and unobstructed by other elements and giving a piece a visually raw and simplified look.

References

De Stijl Modernism History of furniture Dutch inventions