28-07-2015

Dutch Design Daily

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Frederike Huygen www.rkd.nl

Piet Zwart

By 28-07-2015

ONE WEEK ABOUT Heritage by curator Frederike Huygen

The first design archive I ever studied was the one of allround designer Piet Zwart. He kept everything, including notes written in his miniscule handwriting which however, could contain quite severe criticism. At the time this archive was kept by his widow in their house. Every week some museum director would turn up at her doorstep because they were all eager to obtain the archive. Mrs Zwart happily played along since she loved the attention and kept each of them on a string, occasionally giving them something, as a dog gets thrown a bone. The whole archive thus was dispersed. Most of it is now again reunited in The Hague.

Zwart’s graphic work is still highly inspirational, for example these blotting papers he designed each month to be given to the relations of the Bruynzeel firm from the Thirties until the Sixties (9.7 x 22 cm). These are still waiting to be published in a book.