Zig Zag Chair

Overview

The Zig Zag (Cassina code 280) is a chair by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld; Cassina's page and product sheet give 1934 as the design year. The page says it was quickly deemed a design icon and calls it "one of the first examples of a cantilevered solid wood chair", made of four flat pieces of wood set in a rhythmic sequence that looks refined and unstable. The sheet describes a ribbon of wood forming a Z-shape in place of the usual legs-seat-back sequence, and gives Cassina production as 1973/2011.

Construction

The structure is made of slats in solid American cherry or ash, with a half-matt transparent lacquer finish. The boards meet at dovetail joints, which the sheet credits to the mastery of Cassina's carpenters. Ash is also offered dyed blue, red, yellow, white or black; the sheet says the coloured version has an open-pore finish that shows the grain on the front and the sides. The foot-slides are plastic.

Specifications

• Dimensions (drawing 280): W 37 cm × D 43 cm × H 74 cm; the front view also carries a 43 cm vertical line that the drawing does not label
• Structure: solid American cherry or ash slats
• Finishes: natural cherry, natural ash, ash stained white, blue, yellow, black or red
• Foot-slides: plastic

A ribbon of wood

Per the sheet, Rietveld replaced the customary sequence of legs, seat and back with one continuous strip of wood that makes a Z. The result is an early cantilevered seat built from four boards fitted end to end, which the sheet calls an extremely eye-catching example of an unstable structure.

Craft and colour

The sheet singles out the dovetail joints made by Cassina's carpenters as adding to the beauty of the piece. It points to the coloured version, with its open-pore finish bringing out the grain, as the place where the object's aesthetic uniqueness shows best, and links this finish to variations Rietveld himself made on the theme, meant to stress the relation between vertical, oblique and horizontal lines.