a Rietveld joint, in furniture making sometimes also called a Cartesian node, is an overlapping joint of three battens in the three orthogonal directions. It was a prominent feature in the Red and Blue Chair.
Rietveld joints explore directions, whereas Vantongerloo's early De Stijl sculptures explore volume.[1]
In Rietveld's furniture, many of these joints were doweled, meaning that the adjoining faces were connected with glued wooden pins. The first two connections were made by boring a hole about 1 mm deeper than the dowel length, but the third connection was made with a longer dowel, boring through a batten, leaving a circular mark that had to be painted over.[2]