Walk around the tabletop
The square top is only the beginning. Below it, upright planes interrupt one another rather than repeating the same arrangement at every corner. A circle at floor level introduces another geometry. The table seems composed in space as well as drawn in outline.
The Rietveld Stichting describes the small table as asymmetric. That word becomes useful when you change position: a broad plane from one direction becomes a narrow edge from another, and an apparent gap closes or opens. The furniture gives the room several different faces.2
Colour makes the parts readable
The Met records painted beech and beech-veneered plywood in its example. Paint lets a plane register as a distinct element before the eye starts following timber grain. Strong differences between surfaces make the intersections easier to read.1
This is a rewarding way to look at a small object. Instead of asking only whether the top is spacious enough, notice the changing relationship between its footprint, its upright parts and the air around them. A side table can do quite a lot with that small amount of room.
One design, a later making
The Met distinguishes the design of 1923 from its table’s manufacture in 1981 and names Gerard van de Groenekan as maker. The later object carries an earlier spatial idea; it does not erase the years between them.1
That distinction also keeps the central pleasure in view. What travels through the design is a composition, ready to change again whenever someone walks past it.
