Hopmi chair

With traces of decal HOPMI
Chromed steel and fiberboard
31 3/8  x 16 x 19 7/8  in. (79.7 x 40.6 x 50.5 cm)

Provenance:
Collection of the artist
Acquired from the above by Bertus Mulder, Utrecht, 1961

Literature:
Peter Vöge, The Complete Rietveld Furniture, Rotterdam, 1993, p. 103, no. 176
Ida van Zijl, Gerrit Rietveld, London, 2010, p. 100

Catalogue note:
Gerrit Rietveld's first experiments with tubular steel furniture dating back to 1926-1927 clearly demonstrate the  cabinetmaker's approach to this new material.  In his first armchair of tubular steel, Rietveld used gaspipes and T-fittings which simply imitated the straight posts and rails and traditional joints found in his wooden chairs.  Since Rietveld was not yet capable of bending and welding tubular steel he failed to exploit the characteristics of this flexible material.  Later that same year, Rietveld developed the Beugel chair which was composed of two bracket-shaped tubular steel frames that supported a fiber seat and backrest. It is not known whether Rietveld designed this chair prior to the 1927 Weissenhof exhibition, where both Mart Stam and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe showed the first cantilever tubular steel chairs.  The real innovation in Rietveld's Beugel chair however was not the tubular steel frame but the fiber undulating seating shell.  In the years to follow, Rietveld experimented with other chair models in tubular steel which again were mainly adaptations of his existing wooden chairs.  In his search for the ultimate inexpensive easy-to-produce (and preferably one-piece) chair Rietveld concentrated on the most pragmatic and economic use of modern materials such as fiber, plywood and metal rather than to look for the most innovative-looking design. Thus, when in the early 1930's Rietveld first saw the tubular steel chairs produced by N.V. Hollandse Patent Metaalindustrie (Hopmi), he was particularly interested in the special nut which this Utrecht firm had developed.  In 1932 Hopmi had applied for a patent on their so-called 'Torpedo' nut, which had a double thread to connect two steel tubes without welding.
The first tubular steel chairs in which this new invention was applied were designed by the architect H.F. Mertens and showed a traditional and rather complicated design. Rietveld on the contrary recognized the potential of the new construction method, which enabled economic packing and transport for the producer as well as easy assemblage for the user. Rietveld designed a chair for Hopmi which consisted of only four U-shaped tubes, three of which were identical, with a fiber or plywood seat and backrest. With the 'Torpedo' nut connections, it took mere minutes to assemble the frame on which the fiber or plywood seat and backrest were connected with regular nuts and bolts. Apart from this dining chair, Rietveld also designed an armchair for Hopmi, an example of which is in the Centraal Museum Utrecht.  This chair is marked with a Hopmi tag stating 'patent pending' which dates the chair around 1932-1934 (respectively the years the patent was applied for and granted).  On an undated sketch by Rietveld, the two versions of the Hopmi chair can be found amidst other furniture designs from the 1930s. The armchair on the sketch corresponds with the existing armchair, although an annotation by Rietveld indicates fiber as material for the seat and backrest which in the actual chair was realized in elegantly curved plywood.  On the sketch, the dining chair has a similar seat and backrest whilst in the chair offered here has a variant more angular shape.  The present lot was in the collection of the artist, and these characteristics might indicate that the dining chair was still in a developmental stage.  The present lot and an armchair in the collection of the Centraal Museum are the only known examples of the “Hopmi” chair design.