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Galerie Van den Bruinhorst

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (Utrecht, 1888-1964)
Metz & Co sideboard ‘r54', 1936
Executed in The Netherlands, circa 1941
White laquered beech wood and plywood, metal and wire glass
H 93 x W 200 x D 51.5 cm
Provenance: Mr and Mrs Montagne-Van Lommel, Rotterdam 1941; Mrs. H.H. Van Domisse-Van Lommel, 1947 the Hague; Mrs. Foss-Montagne 1991; Sotheby’s Amsterdam 1995; private collection, Amsterdam
Exhibition: Bas van Pelt, The Netherlands, The Hague, 1960

Commissioned by the avant-garde department store Metz & Co in Amsterdam, the Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld designed a small sideboard in 1932 consisting of wire glass sliding doors on a chromed steel base that could be combined with a separate drawer unit. With this design as a starting point he created sideboard r54 in 1936 which is a combination of the small sideboard and the drawer unit in one piece. The first owners bought this sideboard in 1941.