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Building the Rietveld Crate Chair

I started building the Rietveld Crate Chair.  The instructions are in the book: How to Construct Rietveld Furniture. It’s a nice book and also gives some background on the chair. It was part of the Crate Furniture series from 1934. The Crate Furniture was designed to build yourself, there are only straight cuts. The  idea being that everyone should have access to well designed furniture. This chair most closely matched my own design goals.

I built this chair from standard size 1×6 cedar boards and made it a little higher, matching common seat height of easy chairs. The end result was not as sturdy as I expected. I added a board under the seat to bring extra stability.

Modifying the Crate Chair

In this modification I took out the arm rests and make the seat and back rest on the frame rather than hang it in between. The result is sturdier and easy to assemble. The proportions look a bit odd though.

Introducing 2×4’s

The 1×6 boards I had been using were not as affordable as 2×4’s. I had also figured out how to build a table out of 2×4. Connecting 3 2×4’s from all three directions gave the corners the right stability. Exposing the ends of the bars gave the table a distinct look.

The idea behind this chair was to make it look like a table with one end folded up to make the back. This chair was not as easy to put together. It sits actually more comfortable than the chair I ended up with. To support the seat and the back, a couple extra pieces underneath are needed. This did not create as clean of a concept as I wanted.

Final Version

For the final version I broke with the idea of the same direction for the seat and the back. There are no additional support bars needed. What You See Is What You Get.

Shown here is a brand new 2×4 chair. The chair also fits standard size 18″x18” cushions!

Here is the first post with a little bit of background on the 2×4 outdoor chair. 

I started building my own furniture after I could not find affordable modern outdoor furniture.

Being from the Netherlands and with a back ground in industrial design, I was familiar with the work of Gerrit Rietveld. His crate chair was the kind of chair I was looking for and I started building one. I modified the design a little so it would work with 1×6 boards. When it was finished it appeared not sturdy enough for the needs of my kids who used it upside down and side ways to climb on. Also, the 6×1 boards were not the readily available while 2×4’s are.

So I started building prototypes with 2×4’s and did lots of iterations in sketchup. My guidelines were that it had to be very easy to build and assemble and made out of 2×4’s. So I only used straight cuts, and screws to put the pieces together.

The result is a simple sturdy chair that is easy to build from readily available materials. I built mine from recycled wood from the re-store which brings some extra character.