A rare 'Elling' sideboard, designed 1919, executed circa 1962-1965

For an additional image of this lot please see page 2.

The Elling cabinet belongs to a brief yet explosively creative chapter in Rietveld’s development as an architect and designer. Together with the now-iconic ‘Red-Blue’ chair, these works capture the intellectual and artistic tumult of a world now in change. Both these works present as if inversions of their expected type – just as the substance of a chair is merely traced by the delineations of the frame, so too the cabinet reveals the interior as exterior, the components identified, exploded and now held static in time, space and volume.

The unique first example of this cabinet was exhibited in 1920 and was soon acquired by the architect Piet Elling. That example is now lost, destroyed in a fire, and no other pre-war examples were executed. Of this original example, only a single drawer survived, and this fragment together with the original 1919 drawing formed the basis for an exact reconstruction created by Rietveld together with his dedicated cabinetmaker van de Groenekan, for the Stedelijk Museum in 1951, where this example remains exhibited. There is no evidence that any further Elling cabinets were executed between the 1951 Stedelijk replica, and the Housden example listed on 1962 correspondence with van de Groenikan. The conclusion that this is only the second to be executed is reinforced by van de Groenekan’s uncertainty over costing, and by improvised features of construction that are since refined by 1968, which is the date of one of the earliest cabinets believed to have been produced after Rietveld’s death in 1964. This latter example, commissioned by architect Tjeerd Deelstra, was sold Christie’s London, November 2015, and is now retained in the collection of the Kirkland Museum, Denver.

The present example is therefore almost certainly only the second Elling cabinet to have been reconstructed, both this and the Stedelijk example being the only two to have been commissioned directly from Rietveld and during his lifetime.

This lot is accompanied by photographic copies of original invoices and correspondence 1962-1965 between Brian Housden and Gerard van de Groenekan, detailing costs and progress. Also included, is a photographic copy of the entry page of the 1990 South Bank Centre, London, exhibition Rietveld Furniture and the Schroder House, signed by van de Groenekan 6th April 1991, confirming that the collection of Rietveld designs were executed by him 1955-1963.