Mid-Century Modern Panama Wall Light by Wim Rietveld for Gispen

Youngest son of legendary Dutch architect-designer Gerrit Rietveld, Wim Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1924. Though he initially apprenticed in a furniture factory in Utrecht, by 1950 he had enrolled at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague to study design while also working in his father’s firm. Soon after, designer-entrepreneur Willem Hendrik Gispen took an interest in his work and invited him to produce designs for his company.

By 1953, Rietveld was head of design at Gispen, where he developed the award-winning Furniture for a Simple Interior collection, which included the iconic 1407 Chair (1953/54). Designed in collaboration with Dutch designer André Cordemeyer, the 1407 received the gold medal at the X Triennale di Milano in 1954 and achieved great popularity in the Netherlands for both domestic and office interiors well into the 1960s. Additional standout designs by Rietveld for Gispen include the Model 116 Chair (1953), Panama Lamp (1953), Model 663 Storage System (1954), and Mondial Chair (1958)—which was created for the Dutch Pavilion at the World Expo in Brussels in 1958.

In 1958, Rietveld left the Gispen and moved to Ahrend de Cirkel, where he began a fruitful collaboration with leading Dutch designer Friso Kramer. Together they produced a number of now-iconic designs, including the Results Chair (1958) and Reply Drafting Table (1958), the latter of which received the prestigious Signe d'Or prize in Brussels in 1963. Rietveld’s own Pyramid Tables and Chairs (1960) for Ahrend De Cirkel were also highly successful and remain sought-after on the vintage market today.

Famously, Rietveld defined his design ethos as “well shaped, solid, practical, and cheap.” This rationalist approach was in line with the needs of postwar Holland. In those years, Rietveld was an active member of the Goed Wonen foundation, which was dedicated to economic recovery and better living through good design. Throughout his career, Rietveld produced functionalist seating, tables, storage and shelving systems, and lighting that were spare yet homey, efficient yet eye-catching. Plywood and steel were his materials of choice. Beyond his prolific work for Gispen and Ahrend De Cirkel, Rietveld designed for other Dutch furniture manufacturers like Auping and Kembo, among others.

From 1960, Rietveld concentrated on transportation design, while lecturing at his alma mater, the Royal Academy, as well as the Technical University in Delft. Impressed by the diversity of his skills, the Technical University of Delft appointed him Extraordinary Professor in 1973. Rietveld’s creations can be found in many Dutch institutions, like the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He passed away in 1985.

Willem Hendrik (W. H.) Gispen, a pioneer of Dutch functionalism, was born in Amsterdam in 1890. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, he studied design in the architecture department at the Academy of Visual Arts & Technical Science in Rotterdam. In 1916, he set up an eponymous metalwork shop dedicated to ornamental iron, brass, and bronze decorative arts. During these early years, Gispen produced objects in Expressionist and Art Nouveau styles.

In the 1920s, however, through encounters with influential theorists and practitioners of modernism—such as De Stijl architect J. J. P. Oud, Deutscher Werkbund architect Hermann Muthesius, and Purist architect Le Corbusier—Gispen’s firm increasingly moved toward mechanized production and rational, economical, minimalist designs. His geometrically reduced Giso Light (1926/7), now considered one of the Netherlands’ greatest design icons, was the culmination of his newfound commitment to functionalism. It was quickly followed by his first cantilevered, tubular steel chair, inspired by the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Mart Stam. Gispen’s marketing and advertising arms also adopted the vanguard spirit of the day through cutting-edge typography and collaged photos by the likes of graphic artist Paul Schuitema and photographer Jan Kamman.

Gispen’s successes in the 1920s were followed by years of hardship. The 1929 Wall Street Crash and the resulting Great Depression nearly sent the company into bankruptcy. In response, Gispen was reorganized, and naval architect W. van Osselen was brought in as co-director to develop a promising office furniture line in steel. Multiple patents lawsuits—from Stam and van der Rohe in particular—further hampered the company’s growth in the 1930s. Then, in the 1940s, W. H. Gispen was imprisoned for protesting the Nazi Kulturkammer censorship policies. In 1949, he resigned from his own company due to mounting artistic tensions with van Osselen, but he remained a consultant for Gispen until the 1960s. 

Gispen flourished in the 1950s and '60s, even after its founder's departure. In particular, the company found great success with the minimalist, rationalist designs of A. R. Cordemeyer and Wim Rietveld. Standout designs from the Gispen collection in the postwar era include the 1407 Armchair (1954) by Cordemeyer and Rietveld, Model 663 Storage System (1954) by Rietveld, Model Giso 4050 Lamp (1956) by Rietveld, 217 Chair (1957) by Rietveld and his father Gerrit Rietveld, 1262 Chair (1959) by Cordemeyer, and 1637 Swivel Chair (1963) by Cordemeyer.

W. H. Gispen's design career did not end upon his departure from the company. he went on to found another design manufacturing company, called Kembo, in 1953 and taught at the Koninklijke Academie in The Hague, among other design ventures

Today, Gispen operates under the name Gispen International BV and continues to reproduce W. H. Gispen’s original designs alongside evolving lines of office furniture. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam organized the first exhibition dedicated to Gispen in 1981, which focused primarily on lamp designs from 1916 to 1949. The Giso Model 404 Piano Lamp (1927/28), designed by Oud and Gispen and produced by the Gispen firm, can be found in a number of museum collections, including the Cooper Hewitt and MoMA in New York and the Wolfsonian in Miami.

*All images courtesy of Gispen