before its time?  

No
It's ridiculous.

The manufacturer info and date is interesting...
Wright says it's Gerard van de Groenekan for Cassina, 1967. Does that mean that it's a prototype built by van de Groenekan to show the Cassina craftsmen how he and Rietveld made the table?
If so, why'd it take Cassina until 1973 to begin manufacturing any Rietveld pieces, and until 1981 to begin manufacturing this table? Anyone know the story?

Yup, it's ridiculous...
shield my eyes!

Not only is it ridiculous
but it can also be used upside down by the look of it, thereby making it twice as ridiculous as it is.

Well...
I am not a fan of the table, but I do find the Schröder house interesting. It was certainly ahead of its time, or maybe out of its time, in the sense that the time for that type of highly flexible interiors doesn't seem to have come yet. Olive, a concept for your house?!?

so....getting controversial...
what exactly is so ridiculous about it? if this is ridiculous, then are all rietveld's designs also ridiculous and, by extension all the designs of De Stijl (and by further extension, some of the Bauhaus stuff - Breuer's Slatted chair is heavily influenced by Rietveld). it does exactly what a side table should do - it holds stuff off the floor. what would have been hitting the floor, when it was designed in 1924!!, are the jaws of all the people who saw it, so innovative and imaginative and completely unlike anything that had gone before.
chrs, paul.
btw, i lived not half a mile away from the schoeder house in utrecht in the late 80's but wasn't interested in modernist furniture so never went - still, utrecht is a great city so that's my excuse to go back...

Uhh
Looks pretty typical of Bauhaus to me.

Really
The Schroeder side table is incredibly beautiful, intellectually logical and perfectly functional.
Design history would not be bereft without the Red/Blau Chair, this table and the entire Schroder House.
(In my mind, much of Memphis is ridiculous! sorry)

so...am i to assume...
that the aesthetic (viewed from almost a century later) is the most important thing about a piece, never mind it's historical context or what the designer was trying to achieve. This table comes from, and was designed specifically for, a building which is a Unesco World Heritage Site and "an outstanding expression of human creative genius in its purity of ideas and concepts as developed by the De Stijl movement" (quote from the Unesco Committee who gave the house the Heritage Site status).
Just a thought...
Cheers, Paul.

I Sneaked
a pic at the recent Van Doesburg & The International Avant-Garde exhibition at Tate Modern

Yes, Paul...
It and most design directly influence by it is indeed ridiculous.
And why's it so hard to work that out?
Yes, it's a table. But it's wastefully designed, if a table is to do nothing than hold things up as you say. What purpose does all that material serve? Not only does it fail aesthetically, but I'm sure you'd be cursing it functionally the minute you tried to pick it up and move it across the room to vacuum or what not. Most poor design is either overly pretentious or overly pragmatic. This is certainly the former.

Where could we purchase an instrument to measure ridiculousness?
Sorry, I was sleeping siesta but finally I woke up. 🙂
Provably Rietveld's work is as ridiculous for some non Dutch, as Eames chairs and work is for some non Americans, or as the Grupo Austral (Bonet, Kurchan,Ferrari-Hardoy - BKF) work is for some non Argentines.
My self I envy joeninety that can check in site how much ridiculous or not it is. And to Robert, that could be there and take pics, and discovering more proto-Memphis examples for DAers. 😉
ps. By the way: I wonder if football world cup, and the passion that generates, here for example, looks more or less ridiculous to others as the table.

Timing may not be...
Timing may not be everything, but sometimes I wonder if it comes pretty close. Take my wife ...
Rietveld is not Memphis, despite -- or even maybe in spite of -- the Schroeder table. In fact, I'm pretty certain he never even heard of Bob Dylan.
'Well, they're not showing any lights tonight ... '
*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nheBN2UWAaM

Spare me, gustavo...
I love Danish design. I love California modern design. I have a particular itch for Japanese minimalism. I love football and figure your Argentina will be disappointing in this tournament just as they were in qualifying as your manager's utter incompetence is almost as stunning as his brilliance when he was a footballer himself. And this table's silliness is rivaled only by the silliness of your assumptions of my ignorance in not understanding or comprehending the supposed concept of a failed design liked only by people who like bad design.
Cheers.