A set of nesting boxes by Dutch designer Ko Verzuu, circa 1930. Verzuu was officially labeled a De Stijl modernist, his name often associated with Rietveld’s. He designed colorful wooden toys for ADO Speelgoed, a socially progressive Dutch company that operated from the mid 1920s until very recently. Some of his designs include miniature furniture and dollhouses. But this set of nesting boxes is certainly a different kind of thing. Children could indeed use it to play with, but it is essentially much more than a toy because it is not designed for a specific age group (children) only. Instead, it is designed for a universal function: expandable, customizable, space-saving containment. Unlike today’s reductive toys, specifically marketed to gender, age segment or cultural background and therefore incapable of awakening children’s curiosity for a sustained period of time, Verzuu’s set of nesting boxes demands active engagement -rather than passive behavior- no matter who the user may be. The principle of nesting determines the form, proportion and materiality of the individual components. Beyond that, how the different elements (boxes) are used and how they relate to each other when they are being used is not prescribed either in terms of function, or user. Nested objects are linked formally, but they are independent: each one of the boxes from the set could operate in its own context without any possible reference to the larger box that contains it, or the smaller box that it contains.
