.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
“This is a historic chair. It is the chair that stood until 1963 in Rietveld’s own room at his studio on Oude Gracht 55 in Utrecht. There he used it as a support when making his models. As a result there are, in a few places, small cuts which were made by Rietveld himself.
In 1963 I returned to rent a room at the same house on Oude Gracht where I had lived as an artist from 1950 to 1961. I did not have much furniture. At the end of the day I had long conversations with Rietveld, who had now bought this house. I was a great admirer of his work and his ideas about space and simplicity of measurements. He was interested in my studies on human depth perception and its consequences for the perception of space that I had executed in the Psychological Laboratory. We also talked about how specific odours can work as space magnifiers. We had some drinks together but one of us always had to sit on the bed, because I only had one chair. After two get-togethers he brought the current chair and gave it to me because, as he explained, he hardly used it anymore for making models. Also his staff (Jaap van Grunsven and Hanneke Schröder) had said repeatedly that the chair could make a bad impression on visitors. I used the chair for a while but after Rietveld’s death I went to treat it as a relic. It has always been in my office, but is no longer used. Now I hope that a Rietveld collector is interested in it and understands the historical value. Beautiful and immaculate it is not. Historically meaningful, and authentic with the cuts of the master himself, it is.”
E. P. Köster
September 2015
Prof. Dr. E.P. Köster is an expert in ethology, with special interest in the dynamics of food preference, and in incidental memory for foods and odours. In 1989 he co-founded the European Sensory Network. From 1971 to 1996 he was Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology at Utrecht University. Since 1996 he has held the role of Emeritus Professor at the Helmholz Institute, Utrecht University, in addition to operating his own consultancy.
In 1963 I returned to rent a room at the same house on Oude Gracht where I had lived as an artist from 1950 to 1961. I did not have much furniture. At the end of the day I had long conversations with Rietveld, who had now bought this house. I was a great admirer of his work and his ideas about space and simplicity of measurements. He was interested in my studies on human depth perception and its consequences for the perception of space that I had executed in the Psychological Laboratory. We also talked about how specific odours can work as space magnifiers. We had some drinks together but one of us always had to sit on the bed, because I only had one chair. After two get-togethers he brought the current chair and gave it to me because, as he explained, he hardly used it anymore for making models. Also his staff (Jaap van Grunsven and Hanneke Schröder) had said repeatedly that the chair could make a bad impression on visitors. I used the chair for a while but after Rietveld’s death I went to treat it as a relic. It has always been in my office, but is no longer used. Now I hope that a Rietveld collector is interested in it and understands the historical value. Beautiful and immaculate it is not. Historically meaningful, and authentic with the cuts of the master himself, it is.”
E. P. Köster
September 2015
Prof. Dr. E.P. Köster is an expert in ethology, with special interest in the dynamics of food preference, and in incidental memory for foods and odours. In 1989 he co-founded the European Sensory Network. From 1971 to 1996 he was Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology at Utrecht University. Since 1996 he has held the role of Emeritus Professor at the Helmholz Institute, Utrecht University, in addition to operating his own consultancy.