passion, function and beauty. henry van de velde and his ... · klassik stiftung weimar |...

1 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Exhibition Passion, Function and Beauty | 03.2013

Editing: Linon Medien

Audio Guide to the exhibition

Passion, Function and Beauty.

–

Henry van de Velde and his

Contribution to European

Modernism


Content

701: Henry van de Velde: Six-arm Candelabra ......................................................................... 3

702: Henry van de Velde: Faits du village VII, La fille qui remaille (Girl sewing) (1890) ....... 4

703: Victor Horta: Elements from the Turin Ensemble (1902) .................................................. 5

704: Henry van de Velde: Belt Buckle for Gertrud Osthaus (1898/99) ..................................... 6

705: Henry van de Velde: Abstract Plant Composition (1893) .................................................. 7

706: Henry van de Velde: Blue Tea Gown with wide, decorative border (um 1896) ............... 8

707: Henry van de Velde: Bloemenwerf Dining Table (1895) .................................................. 10

708: Henry van de Velde: Barber’s workstation for the François Haby Barber Salon ............. 11

709: Henry van de Velde: Tropon Advertising Poster (1897/98) ............................................. 12

710: Gustave Serrurier-Bovy: Silex Armchair (1905) ............................................................... 13

Josef Hoffmann: Sitzmaschine (1908)

711: Henry van de Velde: Writing Desk for the Publisher Ludwig Löffler (1898) ................... 14

712: Erica von Scheel: Student’s Work: Vinegar and Oil Bottles (1903) .................................. 15

713: Henry van de Velde: Dinner Service for 10 people (1903/04) ........................................... 16

714: Johanna Brinkhaus: Wax Batik on Silk.............................................................................. 17

715: Henry van de Velde: Wax Batik on Silk (1905) ................................................................ 18

716: Georg Kolbe: Portrait of Harry Graf Kessler (1916) ......................................................... 19

717: Henry van de Velde: Wicker Chair (1908) ....................................................................... 20

718: Henry van de Velde: Nursery Table (1911) ....................................................................... 21

719: Henry van de Velde: Draft Design for the Director’s Room (1908) .................................. 22

720: Henry van de Velde: Home Hohe Pappeln (Model) .......................................................... 23

721: Henry van de Velde: Dumont Theatre Draft Design (1904), Werkbund Theatre ............. 24

722: Henry van de Velde: Draft Drawing of the Nietzsche Monument (1912) ........................ 25

723: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: “Head of van de Velde (light)” (1917) ........................................ 26

724: Henry van de Velde: Kettle with réchaud (1922-1925) ..................................................... 27

725: Model of the ‘Prince Baudouin’ mail steamer (1934) ........................................................ 28

726: Max Elskamp: Salutations, dont d’angé (1893) ................................................................. 29

727: Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1908) ............... 30

728: Desk with book cases, UB Ghent (from 1920) .................................................................. 31

729: Oscar Jespers: Portrait of Henry van de Velde (c. 1930) ................................................... 32


Welcome to this major exhibition entitled: ‘Passion, Function and Beauty. Henry van de Velde and his Contribution to European Modernism’! This six-arm candelabra, our first exhibit on this tour, dates from the late 1890s. It already combines many elements charac-teristic of Van de Velde’s work, especially his love for dynamic lines and curves. The candelabra’s design is nearly entirely structured around dynamic lines. In some elements, these lines flow smoothly, while in others they create striking curves away from and towards the centre. Yet, in this process, the individual form is perfectly fused with the object’s function. In Van de Velde’s view, the perfection of an object’s design is directly linked to how well the object fulfils its purpose. (short pause)

This major exhibition of outstanding works by Henry van de Velde presents the spec-trum of his artistic activity – from 1890 to the end of the 1930s. Van de Velde’s most productive period was probably between 1902 and 1917 when he was here in Weimar as the advisor for Thuringian artisans and craft industries, and was Director of the School of Arts and Crafts. Our exhibition shows that Van de Velde was a multi-talented artist whose designs embraced all areas of life, from houses to furniture, clothing, jewellery and lamps – and even the interior furnishings for a se-ries of large steamers. Henry van de Velde had a vision of transforming people’s sur-roundings into a Gesamtkunstwerk - a syn-thesis of the arts – where every artistic de-

701: Henry van de Velde: Six-arm Candelabra

Henry van de Velde: Six-arm Candelabra (1898/99)


702: Henry van de Velde: Faits du village VII, La fille qui re-maille (Girl sewing) (1890)

The young girl is portrayed calmly con-centrating on her work. It is a sunny day; the light through the trees casts an oddly-shaped shadow on the grass. Behind the girl, we can see a path and a large build-ing. This work belongs to van de Velde’s Faits du village series comprising vari-ous scenes from village life, and dates from 1890. To create this image, he em-ployed the pointillist technique of pains-takingly juxtaposing dabs of pure colour onto the picture’s support. Pointillism is most closely associated with the French painter George Seurat. Van de Velde had discovered the technique several years before in Seurat’s works, and was thrilled by its possibilities. Pointillism does not mix colours on a palette and then apply them, but sets dots or short brushstrokes of pure colour close to one another. The colours are then only combined to create an image in the eye of the beholder. When he was 17, Henry van de Velde started his classical art training at the Fine Arts Academy in Antwerp – despite the disapproval of his parents, who want-

ed him to go into a solid middle-class ad-ministrative career. As you can see, Henry van der Velde was a virtuoso painter. He spent time in Paris a number of times to explore the works of the Impressionist painters, and painted in a pointillist style for some years until, in 1890, he saw works by Vincent van Gogh. Deeply impressed, he then sought to por-tray the flow of life through an emotive and dynamic use of line.

Henry van de Velde: Faits du village VII, La fille

qui remaille (Girl sewing) (1890)


703: Victor Horta: Elements from the Turin Ensemble (1902)

In 1902, one of the seminal events in popu-larising art nouveau took place – the Inter-national Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts in Turin, an exhibition exclusively dedicated to design. The objects on show there included this couch table and chair created by the Bel-gian architect and designer Victor Horta. Born in 1861, Horta was one of the first architects on the European mainland to reject the historical-revivalist styles so prevalent in the second half of the nine-teenth century. Even in the early 1890s, Horta began trans-ferring art nouveau designs to architecture. Previously, the new direction taken by art nouveau – or Jugendstil, as it is known in Germany – was primarily applied to craft products.

The houses that Horta designed became milestones in art nouveau in Belgium. In van de Velde’s view, Horta was only a ‘mediocre architect’. Above all, he disliked the overloaded, functionless ornamental elements which Horta used to decorate his buildings. A good example here is the So-cialist Party headquarters in Brussels with a façade entirely in glass and steel – as you can see in the photo on the wall. In his memoirs, van de Velde noted:

“Horta’s exaggerations are intended to beautify the rational metal constructions, but are annoying for their pointlessness and unbridled fantasy.”

Victor Horta: Elements from the Turin Ensemble

(1902)

Victor Horta: Elements from the Turin Ensemble

(1902)


704: Henry van de Velde: Belt Buckle for Gertrud Osthaus (1898/99)

Van de Velde designed this silver belt buckle in the late 1890s. The buckle re-sembles a relief of dynamic sinuous lines. From early on in his artistic career, van de Velde had been fascinated by linearity – for example, as found in nature. In his memoirs, he recalls how in 1890, when he was staying on the North Sea coast, he of-ten went down the beach: “(...) to sketch the linear arabesques left by the receding waves in the sand. Earlier, I had already been fascinated by similar shapes in the dunes: (...) sophisticated abstract decora-tions drawn by wind in the sand.” Later, van de Velde also addressed the the-ory of the line and its laws of movement. Through his use of dynamic lines, he hoped to develop decorative elements that were no longer figural, but purely abstract. In an essay written in 1901, he noted: “(...) it was the thought that lines stand in an equally logical and consistent relationship with each other as numbers and notes in music which led me to search for a purely abstract decorative art which derives its beauty from itself (...).”

Van de Velde carried out his first experi-ments in abstract ornamentation on two-dimensional images, for example, as book designs or advertising posters. But shortly before 1900, he also started to apply his structures of dynamic lines to craft work – as is evident, for example, in his design for this belt buckle.

Henry van de Velde: Belt Buckle for Gertrud Ost-

haus (1898/99)


705: Henry Van de Velde: Abstract Plant Composition (1893)

Is this a plant? Or an abstract image – per-haps a line study? It is hard to say – and only the pumpkin in the lower right hand corner can actually be identified as a plant with any certainty. This pastel, painted in 1893, is a key work in van de Velde’s œuvre. It clearly reflects his move away from painting and sketch-ing towards artistic works with a universal message – and, moreover, to entirely struc-turing his works through dynamic linearity and decorative elements. After painting in an Impressionist or neo-impressionist style for many years, van de Velde adopted an increasingly abstract style. In this develop-ment, he was primarily interested in linear-ity. The fascination with the power of lines remained with him throughout his life and was a major influence on his work. He wrote about this fascination in his mem-oirs: “Even after I had abandoned painting, the demon of lines has not left me and when I was creating the first ornaments, they came into being out of a dynamic in-terplay of their elementary forces.“

Elsewhere, he describes how his abstract use of line was inspired by nature, and not just by Van Gogh. But what was it that led Henry van de Velde to give up painting altogether? To find out, just key in 1. Second level: After the early death of his mother in 1888, Henry van de Velde withdrew into himself. He started to read philosophy in-tensively including, for example, the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. He was also influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris, the initi-ators of the English Arts and Crafts Move-ment, who criticised industrial mass pro-duction. Since, in their view, aesthetic de-sign in industrial production was constant-ly degraded, both Ruskin and Morris called for a radical shift to create everyday objects from the best materials in solid, craft quality, and with clear designs. William Morris in particular regarded a return to craftwork as one element in an overall artistic and social reform which would also upgrade the status of craftwork in relation to the ‘high arts’. His credo was that high quality art and craftwork could positively influence both individuals and everyday life. Van de Velde was particularly impressed by Morris' idea of art having a decisive role to play, especially in an industrial and technical society. Yet these ideas also led to an existential crisis. Van de Velde came to believe that painting was no longer an adequate means of expression. In the end, from 1893, he turned to the ap-plied arts, and later to architecture. This abstract study of plants was one of his last paintings.

Henry Van de Velde: Abstract Plant Composition

(1893)


706: Henry van de Velde: Blue Tea Gown with wide, decorative border (c. 1896, replica 1964)

Just imagine how a woman of polite socie-ty was dressed at the end of the 19th centu-ry. Her waist laced into a tight corset, she wore ample layers of heavy petticoats un-der an hourglass-shaped gown lavishly decorated with lace and ornaments. In comparison, the blue tea gown on display here is radically different. This wide gown falls straight to the floor, was comfortable to wear and adapted easily to the move-ments of the wearer’s body – and allowed her to breathe freely. And what a relief that must have been! Around 1900, the fashionable restrictive, corseted gowns were criticised by physi-cians, social reformers and women’s rights campaigners, who all advocated a ‘reform dress’, which were essentially flowing, un-corseted gowns. Artists like Henry van de Velde felt called on to design modern ‘healthy’ women’s clothing able to meet high aesthetic standards as well.

This is a replica of his Tea Gown – a dress to be worn for afternoon tea at home. As you may have already noticed, the de-sign is again clearly indebted to van de Velde’s principle of linearity – evident, for example, in the decorative borders. The seams are accentuated to make the structure of the dress visible. The wide cut allows a recognisable shape without un-duly emphasising the female form – and was intended to pave the way for modern yet timeless women’s clothing decorated with abstract and linear elements. But van de Velde’s vision of his aesthetic reform gown replacing Parisian fashion never became a reality. Not only were his aesthetic standards too high, but the elab-orate gown was too expensive to produce as a handmade item. In the end, van de Velde’s dress designs were mainly worn by his wife, Maria Sèthe. She was also an artist, and played an important part in van de Velde’s work. Find out more about Maria Sèthe by key-ing in 2.

Henry van de Velde: Blue Tea Gown with wide,

decorative border (c. 1896, replica 1964)


Second level: Maria Sèthe not only wore the dresses de-signed by her husband, but also largely made them herself. Maria was her hus-band’s invaluable supporter and helper. Just like him, she too gave considerable thought to the reform of women’s clothing. Moreover, she was an artist in her own right, creating, for example, embroideries as a cottage industry. Maria Sèthe’s father was a Dutch textile manufacturer and her mother a German musician. Her family was well-off and took a keen interest in all things cultural. She grew up in in Paris and Brussels, studying painting with the Flemish neo-impressionist Théo van Rysselberghe, who introduced her to Henry. In 1893, they spent a holiday together in the Dutch countryside with some fellow artists. Maria and Henry fell in love, and she encouraged him to give up painting and dedicate his energies to the applied arts. During her time spent as a student in Lon-don, she had also come into contact with the Arts and Crafts movement there and enthusiastically supported their programme for reform. From then on, Maria and Henry van de Velde were united in pursuing the idea of driving forwards a similar arts and crafts reform movement in Belgian, and later in Germany.

2: Maria Séthe


707: Henry van de Velde: Bloemenwerf Dining Table (1895)

In 1895, van de Velde designed a house known as Bloemenwerf for himself and his wife Maria in Uccle, today a suburb of Brussels. He did not simply design the house itself, but also created the entire inte-rior furnishings – even though he was self-taught in both of these areas. The visitors to Bloemenwerf were especial-ly impressed by the dining table. Here, ra-ther than including any of the usual decora-tive elements, van de Velde’s design fo-cused entirely on function. The table’s most exceptional feature was a slightly raised ceramic panel set into the centre. Thanks to this ingenious addition, hot serv-ing bowls could be placed centrally on the table. Later, the ceramic panel was re-placed by a panel made of brass. Van de Velde’s fascination with the unity of the arts also led him to design the door handles and wallpaper in his Bloemenwerf house. This approach reflected his view that a house was a Gesamtkunstwerk, which should, in every detail, express the personality of its occupants. Without doubt, that idea worked very well – but only as long as van de Velde was building for himself.

When German Impressionist painter Max Liebermann was looking for an architect and van de Velde’s name was suggested, Liebermann is said to have replied: ‘When I furnish my apartment, I want to have the fun with it – and not Van de Velde.”

Henry van de Velde: Bloemenwerf Dining Table


708: Henry van de Velde: Barber’s workstation for the François Haby Barber Salon (c. 1901)

In 1900, van de Velde was commissioned to redesign the elegant interior of François Haby’s barber salon in Berlin. Since Haby was barber to Emperor Wilhelm II, the work stations were made only of the finest materials – mahogany and green marble. But the real revolution in this workstation is not in the materials. As is only too obvi-ous, van de Velde did not enclose the brass gas and water pipes under wooden clad-ding. Instead, he left them exposed, their soft lines gracefully curving around the dark wood. In retrospect, van de Velde himself took a rather critical view of his design, writing in his memoirs: “To make the actual purpose of the things and their shapes clear, and to show their function, I tended to restrict myself to skeletons, and forgot to surround them with flesh. But only then does the design appear in its per-

fect form, divine as in the bodies of peo-ple and animals.” Van de Velde’s unusual interior design triggered quite a debate as soon as the salon opened. The leading German Im-pressionist artist Max Liebermann certain-ly looked down his nose at it. When he saw the exposed pipes, he is reported to have said: “You don’t wear your guts like a watch chain across your waistcoat.” But this did nothing to diminish Haby’s success. This star barber did not only earn money with his salon, but also with his range of men’s cosmetic products. His best-known product by far was a groom-ing pack for handlebar moustaches. The pack, called Es ist erreicht – roughly ‘It is achieved’–, comprised a moustache cos-metic and moustache band for the night. With the cosmetic application, the ends of the handlebar moustache could be twisted upwards, as worn by Emperor Wilhelm II – and at that time, the latest craze in moustache fashion. The moustache band was worn at night to ensure the mous-tache kept its shape.

Henry van de Velde: Barber’s workstation for the

François Haby Barber Salon (c. 1901)


709: Henry van de Velde: Tropon Advertising Poster (1897/98)

In his design for this poster, Henry van de Velde broke new ground. In 1898, he was one of the very first artists to design an ad-vertising poster for an industrial company. Van de Velde’s approach was revolution-ary. Rather than designing the standard ‘speaking image’ used in advertising at that time, he combined stylised Art Nouveau lines and surfaces to create an abstract pat-tern. The only reference to the product is the company name at the top ‘Tropon’ and the product below ‘Eiweiss Nahrung’ – protein supplement. This nutritional sup-plement, produced from vegetable and ani-mal protein, was supposed to support a healthier and more balanced diet. From the mid-19th century, the general diet changed fundamentally. While the previous staple foods had largely been cereals, puls-es and potatoes, increasing prosperity led to a growth in the consumption of animal products, particularly meat. Leading nutritionists supported this desire for meat, claiming to have identified the protein in meat as a guarantor of energy and health. As the food industry responded to this surge in demand, it also created a new sector – dietary supplements, tonics and cordials.

Van de Velde did not only design the poster for Tropon. As you can see here, he also designed a metal box for ‘Tropon Biscuits’, and a cookery book cover. In fact, he drafted all Tropon’s packaging, labels and advertising, created a logo, laid out the company’s offices, and even de-signed the company’s stationary and en-velopes –– the earliest example of a ‘corporate design’ in the modern sense. Henry van de Velde: Tropon Advertising Poster

(1897/98)


710: Gustave Serrurier-Bovy: Silex Armchair (c. 1905)

Around 1900, Henry van de Velde was far from being the only product designer who rejected historical-revivalist styles and sought instead to develop an authentic con-temporary design. Fellow Belgian architect and gifted cabinet maker Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, for exam-ple, also wanted to entirely re-design peo-ple’s everyday surroundings. Serrurier-Bovy is known particularly for his Silex range of furniture – to which this armchair belongs. The Silex line was produced as early ready-to-assemble furniture in kit form. When Serrurier-Bovy unveiled his Silex series to the public in 1905, it was a revolution in the history of design – the equivalent, as it were, of inventing the principle behind IKEA furniture. And with low production costs, design furniture was, for the first time, affordable for more than just the wealthy classes.

Further along to the right, you can also see the striking ‘Sitzmaschine’ – literally, a ‘machine for sitting’ – by Viennese de-s igne r Jose f Hof fmann . The ‘Sitzmachine’ was also made in series production – and it is just what the name says. Thanks to the stringent geometrical shapes of the individual pieces and the adjustable back, the armchair has a strongly machine-like appearance, almost as if it could roar off at any moment.

Gustave Serrurier-Bovy: Silex Armchair (c. 1905)


711: Henry van de Velde: Writing Desk (1903)

In 1898, Van de Velde was invited to take part in the annual exhibition of the artists’ association known as the Munich Seces-sion. At that time, Munich was the art cen-tre in Imperial Germany, ranked even be-fore Berlin and Dresden. Van de Velde designed an entire room at the exhibition with items including the fur-nishings for his ‘Study in Oak’. At the cen-tre of the study stood the wonderful desk you can see here – one of Van de Velde’s best known pieces of furniture. You have no doubt already noticed its most prominent feature – its curved shape This was intended to reflect the natural radius of the human arm so that anyone sitting at the desk could easily reach all the writing im-plements and documents. Around 1900, van de Velde was one of a number of designers and architects across Europe interested in revitalising the arts and crafts. They all rejected the prevalent historical-revivalist styles, and were trying to develop a new style reflecting the mod-ern zeitgeist. The key centres in this aes-thetic development included Vienna, Mu-nich, Darmstadt and Glasgow. In this room you can see how differently the artists in these four centres imagined a contempo-rary style.

Henry van de Velde: Writing Desk (1903)


712: Erica von Scheel: Student’s Work: Vinegar and Oil Bot-tles (c. 1903)

These simple yet elegant containers for oil, vinegar and flour were designed by Erica von Scheel, one of van de Velde’s first pri-v a t e s t u d e n t s i n W e i m a r . In 1902, van de Velde moved to Weimar when Wilhelm Ernst, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, appointed him as artistic advisor for the trades and industry. Van de Velde’s remit was to support businesses in the re-gion in all design issues with the aim of fostering the applied arts in Thuringia and making them competitive. The Kunstgew-erbliches Seminar, the Arts and Crafts Seminar, founded in 1902 was the first contact address for trades and industry where they could not only receive advice, but also models for new products. Van de Velde was perfect for the job. He had already headed workshops in Brussels and Berlin, and was a pioneer of cultural renewal. In Weimar, he deliberately moved away from the traditions of the Goethe era, promoting instead a modern, contemporary style. The School of Arts and Crafts, with van de Velde at its head, was also organ-ised in this spirit. The School building was ready to move into in 1906, and opened

officially two years later with 27 students. It was supposed to foster a new genera-tion of talented draughtsmen and women, and modellers. In his memoirs, van de Velde wrote: “Students were not expected to have any knowledge of past styles. Ra-ther than familiarising themselves with products from the past, they were trained to recognise the essentials in the design of a range of objects (...). From that moment, students could only turn to rational design as their sole resource in solving problems in construction or inventing forms and decorative elements.” Erica von Scheel also attended the School of Arts and Crafts. In her first year there, her designs already won awards at a num-ber of competitions. In 1910, she moved to Paris, creating batik textiles and clothes for the famous fashion designer Paul Poi-ret.

Erica von Scheel: Student’s Work: Vinegar and Oil

Bottles (c. 1903)


713: Henry van de Velde: Dinner Service for 10 people (1903/04)

This is part of an extensive Meissen porce-lain dinner service designed by van de Velde. Fritz Schumacher, architect and urban planner, wrote about him: “Never before may a single individual have displayed such multi-talented production in all areas of objects for home use.” What was behind van de Velde’s approach, though, was his idea of making art and de-sign relevant to all spheres of daily life, from A to Z. Ideally, in his view, a house should be regarded as a kind of inhabitable Gesamtkunstwerk – a unity of the arts, where art and life are merged and fused. Ultimately, he set out to create an aesthetic, practical and positive environment to serve the balance and harmony necessary for psychological and emotional health. It is remarkable that Van de Velde was not an expert in all these different areas. In-stead, he carried out many commissions through a process of learning by doing. Sometimes, it didn’t work out – for exam-ple, his gravy boat which dripped when the gravy was poured. But in the majority of cases his lack of expertise was an ad-vantage; since he had no previous knowledge of a topic, he could approach it

impartially and develop completely new solutions. This dinner service was produced be-tween 1903 and 1904, shortly after Van de Velde arrived in Weimar. In the town, he was not only in demand as a multi-talented artist and teacher, but soon showed that he could also shine as a host. The evening get-togethers at van de Velde’s house often included illustrious guests, for example the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, or Jean Jaurès, the French Socialist leader and anti-militarist assassinated in 1914.

Henry van de Velde: Dinner Service for 10 people

(1903/04)


(1903/04)


(1903/04)


714: Johanna Brinkhaus: Wax Batik on Silk

Students at van de Velde’s School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar produced a wide range of art – including, for instance, this wax batik design on silk by the student Jo-hanna Brinkhaus. The pattern is inspired by textile art on the island of Java. Wax-dyed batik cloth has a long tradition throughout Indonesia. In Eu-rope, batik gradually became known in the 19th century through English and Dutch traders. In 1900, shortly before Johanna Brinkhaus created her batik design, Indone-sian batik had created a sensation at the World’s Fair in Paris. However, the batik also clearly reveals the influence of van de Velde’s ideas of design. The ‘Principles of Decorative Design’ was one of the foundation courses at the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts, and was based on van de Velde’s well-known theory of linearity. He described the line as: “…a vital force spontaneously breaking out of us, soaring and sinking back, gliding and coiling forwards, raising us up and transporting our soul into a state only otherwise awakened by singing and dancing.”

For van de Velde, the linear expressed a psychological truth. In his view, decora-tive lines have a logical relationship to each other, rather like numbers or musical notes. Johanna Brinkhaus’ batik works must have reflected his views, since they were awarded a prize at an exhibition of stu-dents’ works in 1913.

Johanna Brinkhaus: Wax Batik on Silk


715: Henry van de Velde: Wax Batik on Silk(c. 1905)

This elegantly curved letter opener was designed by Henry van de Velde himself. However, he left the production and sales of his letter opener to craftsmen carvers in Ruhla in the Thuringian Forest. One of Van de Velde’s main tasks in Wei-mar was to improve product design among regional craft workers, and make the prod-ucts marketable. His employment contract stated that he was to: “…provide expert advice for artisans and industrialists (...) of this country (...) in questions of art and (...) give them an artistic stimulus by preparing pattern drawings, models and samples….” Shortly after van der Velde arrived in Wei-mar in 1902, he set up the Kunstgewerbli-ches Seminar, a kind of design laboratory, intended to improve cooperation between artists and industry as quickly as possible. There, artisans and industrial producers could have their products analysed and im-proved for free. Van de Velde had ambitious plans. Initial-ly, he even believed that with the help of his design laboratory he could establish a new contemporary style across the region. He wrote to the Grand Duke: “I understand the task which your Royal Highness has entrusted me with as nothing else than be-

ing asked to contribute to creating the style of the 20th century.” Van de Velde also advised artisans and businesses in Thuringia on new produc-tion methods and product marketing. Un-til Van der Velde arrived in Weimar, the pottery in the little town of Bürgel had kept to its traditional designs. Since these were no longer marketable, sales had steadily fallen. To support the pottery pro-ducers, Van de Velde quickly designed new crockery, as well as affordable vases and bowls, and arranged exhibitions of their goods to attract new customers.

Henry van de Velde: Letter Opener (c. 1905)


716: Georg Kolbe: Portrait of Harry Graf Kessler (1916)

Without this man, van de Velde’s life would probably have taken a very different course. This portrait head by sculptor Georg Kolbe shows Harry Graf Kessler – one of the most colourful figures in the very different Germanies before and after the First World War. Harry Graf Kessler was a diplomat, writer, art collector and art patron. Today, he is best known for the diary he kept for over fifty years from 1880 until his death in 1937. His diary mentions the names of around 12,000 of his contemporaries, from German Chancellor Bismarck to Albert Einstein and Joséphine Baker – so no won-der Kessler was regarded as someone who

keenly ‘collected people’. He was also an outstanding connoisseur and patron of contemporary art. The walls of his Berlin bachelor apartment, and later his apart-ment in Weimar, were hung with works by van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir and Seu-rat. He commissioned the elegant furni-ture for his apartment from van de Velde, who he had known before he moved to Weimar. Together with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Kessler was also instrumental in bringing van de Velde to Weimar as a source of inspiration and innovation in the applied arts. Förster-Nietzsche and Kess-ler wanted to turn the little town of Wei-mar into a flourishing culture centre for a third time – after Weimar Classicism and the age of Franz Liszt. For this reason, Kessler took up an appointment as the director of the Grand Ducal Museum of Arts and Crafts in 1903. Through Kessler’s excellent contacts, the museum was able to show the very latest European art. But Kessler’s all too ambi-tious plans soon had conservative circles in Weimar up in arms. In 1906, he was attacked in the press for allegedly obscene nude studies by Rodin. As a result, Kess-ler resigned from his position in Weimar – and dedicated himself to his apprecia-tion of art as a private individual.

Georg Kolbe: Portrait of Harry Graf Kessler,

(1916)


717: Henry van de Velde: Wicker Chair (1908)

As part of his work to support craftwork in Thuringia, van de Velde also visited Tannroda, around fifteen kilometres south of Weimar. For centuries, Tannroda had been an important centre for the basket making industry, but business was flag-ging. To stimulate the industry again, van de Velde recommended that the basket makers not only make wicker baskets but also wicker furniture – just like this elegant armchair designed by van de Velde. Van de Velde’s suggestion was a resound-ing success. From then on, even the up-scale Wertheim department store in Berlin always had a collection of wicker furniture from Tannroda on offer. In terms of design, the wicker armchair is a good example of how van de Velde’s style changed while he was in Weimar. There is little left of the opulence of his early de-signs. Instead, shapes have become more simple, influenced by a functional ele-gance.

Although van de Velde created a com-pletely new design for the basket weavers in Thuringia, this was something of an exception. Normally, a company’s prod-uct designers came to van de Velde’s of-fices in Weimar with their own designs to ask for his advice. There, under his super-vision or the supervision of one of his assistants, the designs were reviewed and revised. The improved products were then made in series production. For van de Velde, this process was intend-ed to ensure that the industrial or craft firms were not forced to adopt completely new ideas. After all, producing totally new models would have involved a major restructuring of production – and that would have entailed a far greater econom-ic risk.

Henry van de Velde: Wicker Chair (1908)


718: Henry Van de Velde: Nursery Table (1911)

This table belonged to a set of nursery fur-niture van de Velde designed in 1911 for Berlin businessman Willy Engels. The table is yet another example of Van de Velde’s pioneering designs. For many years, architects and interior designers al-most entirely ignored the particular needs of children. Even in the late 19th century, well-to-do families usually had the chil-dren’s nursery fitted out with almost exact-ly the same kind of furnishings as in the rooms for adults. Of course, the apartments of the working class and less well-off would not have had a children’s room. However, the idea that children need a place to retreat to only became widely es-tablished across all classes of society after the Second World War. The initial moves in this direction in Ger-many can be traced back to around 1900 – and to the Lebensreform movement, which propagated a back-to-nature lifestyle. Fol-lowers of this movement also wanted to completely revamp home décor. They re-jected the gloomy rooms with overladen interiors that had been standard for almost fifty years. Instead, they called for bright rooms with fresh air, and clear lines. And they also turned their attention to children’s

nurseries – for example, the ‘Interior Dec-oration’ magazine from 1903 explained that nursery furniture should: “…stimulate a child’s fantasy and encour-age its creative abilities.” As you can see, van de Velde’s design embraced all aspects of the children’s nursery – reflecting the spirit of the Le-bensreform proponents. Just as with his other interior designs, the nursery was also intended to improve and ennoble those living there.

Henry Van de Velde: Nursery Table (1911)


719: Henry van de Velde: Draft Design for the Director’s Room (1908)

Van de Velde designed this ensemble of writing desk, chain and table lamp for ex-actly the place we are now. In 1907, he was commissioned to revamp and refurbish this old building – at that time housing the Grand Ducal Museum for the Duchy of Weimar-Saxony-Eisenach. Thanks to a series of coloured sketches, we know how he imagined the new furnishings in the individual rooms. The draft design for the Director’s Room is on the wall behind the desk. It gives a vivid impression of what the room would have looked like with van de Velde’s interior design – including this furniture. Among other things, his design is remarka-ble for the fact that the dominant linearity is not curvilinear but the straight line. This clear and functional style is in marked dis-tinction to Van de Velde’s earlier interior designs, which often had sinuous decora-tive elements.

But Weimar’s Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst did not find these designs particularly at-tractive, and hesitated over approving them. Initially, work was to start at some indefi-nite time in the future, but ultimately the plan was shelved altogether.

Henry van de Velde: Draft Design for the Direc-

tor’s Room (1908)


720: Henry van de Velde: Home Hohe Pappeln (Model)

Between July 1907 and March 1908, van de Velde had a house built for his family on the outskirts of Weimar. He called the home ‘Hohe Pappeln’ – literally ‘High Poplars’. This is the only private residence designed by van de Velde which is now a museum and open to the public. Our model shows that the ground plan of the house resembles a ship – with the bow as the pointed entrance area. The façade is asymmetrical and appears to comprise a complex system of interlocking sections. There are edges, angles and projecting ele-ments everywhere, with a few bay win-dows here, and a loggia there. One very prominent feature is the high hipped roof, which the house wears rather like a bonnet over the top floor and attics. The home Hohe Pappeln is one of four pri-vate residences that van de Velde designed for his family in the space of around 30 years. As early as 1895, he created the Bloemenwerf house near Brussels – and you can see interior furnishings from that house on the top floor of this museum. In the 1920s, van de Velde then built the de Tent house on the Dutch North Sea coast and La Nouvelle Maison, also in a suburb of Brussels. If you compare the four models, you’ll no-tice the houses share many common fea-

tures. For example, rather than reviving historical styles, van de Velde relies en-tirely on his own powers of invention. The facades are always functional: they are neither rendered or decorated with ornamental elements. The Hohe Pappeln, Bloemenwerf and de Tent houses are particularly similar. Van de Velde designed all three from inside out – in other words, the structure of the interior rooms determined the shape of the façades. In comparison, La Nouvelle Mai-son from 1927 appears more functional and modern – in this case, the façade comprises simple geometric shapes under a flat roof.

Henry van de Velde: Haus Hohe Pappeln


721: Henry van de Velde: Dumont Theatre Draft Design (1904), Werkbund Theatre (1913-14)

Van de Velde’s theatre projects were very influential in the development of theatre architecture in the early 20th century. This water colour sketch shows a draft design for the Dumont Theatre from 1904. Louise Dumont, a famous Ibsen actress, was plan-ning to found a centre for a theatre festival in Weimar – modelled on, and competing with, the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. But the Weimar court circles were against her, and her plan came to nothing. Most inter-estingly, the sketch shows that van de Velde did not use columns to give a struc-tural shape to the front elevation, but achieved the same effect with slender metal poles. He was constantly looking for alter-natives to the omnipresent columned archi-tectural designs, which he felt were no longer in keeping with the times. Yet van de Velde had to wait until 1914 before he could actually see one of his the-atres built – and there’s a model of the the-atre on the left (right). The theatre was con-structed for the Cologne exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund, an association of architects, designers and industrialists. The Werkbund show involved over fifty new buildings on the site of today’s Cologne Trade Fair Centre and was a major exhibi-tion of contemporary architecture.

The exhibition’s accompanying pro-gramme included a conference where fierce debates broke out over the Werk-bund’s future direction. Architect Her-mann Muthesius had prepared and distrib-uted ten guiding principles in advance to all the Werkbund members, calling for architecture and the applied arts to follow a binding canon of design. Van de Velde reacted immediately to the threat of strict guidelines. In a Cologne hotel, he noted down ten counter guiding principles, and attacked Muthesius head-on with them at the conference. Van de Velde’s principles stated: “In their innermost being, artists are ardent individualists, free, spontane-ous creators. They will never submit vol-untarily to a discipline forcing a stylistic canon onto them.”

Henry van de Velde: Dumont Theatre Draft Design

(1904), Werkbund Theatre (1913-14)


722: Henry van de Velde: Draft Drawing of the Nietzsche Monument (1912)

A real cult developed around the philoso-pher Friedrich Nietzsche at the close of the 19th century, and especially after his death in 1900. The house where he died, which became a popular place of pilgrimage, is today’s Nietzsche Archive in Weimar – and you should certainly take the chance to see it while you are in Weimar. Henry van de Velde converted the house for Nietzsche and his sister and designed the interiors. But there were larger plans in the air. Here, you can see Henry van de Velde’s preliminary draft for a Nietzsche Monument. The idea for such a memorial came from Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth and Harry Graf Kessler, who approached Van de Velde to be the architect. Initially, the monument was to be a small temple struc-ture on a plot below the Archive. But soon the plans became more ambitious. Kessler imagined the Nietzsche Monument as a

Greek temple complex, complete with temple and grove, as well as a stadium for sports competitions. This was, in his view, the only way of combining physical and intellectual power and beauty – per-fectly reflecting the spirit of Nietzsche. Van de Velde provided a number of de-signs, but Kessler was not happy with any of them. In this sketch, for example, he found the temple too oppressive and heavy. It seems as if this project pushed van de Velde to his very limits. For a long time, there had been no doubt about his intuitive feeling for such functional build-ings as residential houses – but that ap-proach was no help in tackling a purely decorative structure. Disillusioned, Kess-ler wrote in his diary: “Without the prompt of utility, his imagination cannot focus.” Ultimately, the Nietzsche Monument re-mained a pipedream. With no definite financing in prospect, the project was shelved in winter 1913 – and never re-vived.

Henry van de Velde: Draft Drawing of the Nie-

tzsche Monument (1912)


723: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: “Head of van de Velde (light)” (1917)

Many renowned artists produced a portrait of Henry van de Velde during the course of his life. This woodcut of a reflective van de Velde set against a mountainous landscape is especially powerful. In van de Velde’s haunting expression, the woodcut mirrors the difficult time of his life when this por-trait was made. This work is by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the famous German expressionist painter and graphic artist. He executed the woodcut in summer 1917 – in the middle of the First World War – while both artists were living in exile in Switzerland. Van de Velde, at that time 54 years old, had recently moved to Berne. As an ‘enemy alien’, he had only been able to obtain an exit visa from Ger-many through the intervention of influen-tial friends.

His wife Maria and their five children had to stay in Germany. The family lived apart for nearly two years. Only Nele, their oldest daughter, was allowed to fol-low her father some time later. She often visited Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who gave her – as his only student – lessons in drawing and printing techniques. Kirch-ner’s influence is clearly evident in Nele’s works, as you can see from two of her woodcuts on show in this room. In the war years, van de Velde became a paternal friend for Kirchner, who was se-riously ill. He supported Kirchner as best as he could, even though his own finan-cial situation was similarly difficult. After the end of the war in 1918, van de Velde wanted to found an artists’ colony in the Swiss town of Uttwil on Lake Constance – and Kirchner’s move to join him was already planned. But van de Velde’s dream came to noth-ing. In Switzerland, he found neither com-missions nor students. A little later he went to Holland. But Ernst Ludwig Kirchner remained in Switzerland – spending the rest of his life there until he committed suicide in 1938.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: “Head of van de Velde

(light)” (1917)


724: Henry van de Velde: Kettle with réchaud (1922-1925)

The tea-kettle is completely spherical, while the device below to heat the water is all rectangles and edges. Add a few rivets and the bright shine of polished brass – with everything extremely simple and re-duced to a few basic shapes. This ensemble was created by Henry van de Velde between 1922 and 25 – in a thor-oughly modern and bold design. The tea-kettle with its heater, known as a réchaud, belonged to a tea service for the Dutch businessman Anton Kröller and his wife Helene Kröller-Müller. The wealthy couple played a decisive role in van de Velde’s life, helping him to re-cover from the financial and personal crises during the First World War. In au-tumn1919, van de Velde received a letter

from the Kröller-Müllers from The Hague; they wanted to commission him as an architect on a number of building pro-jects. Without a moment’s hesitation, van de Velde accepted – at last, he had a job, a task and an income! And so in 1920, he moved to Holland with his wife and chil-dren to start the next stage in his life. Initially, he was supposed to design a large villa for the Kröller-Müllers – with a private museum attached to hold the cou-ple’s extensive collection of modern art. A little later, they decided to build a pub-lic museum. Here, you can see several designs for this massive and extremely expensive museum project. For his de-signs, Van de Velde was inspired by As-syrian architecture. In 1924, work on the building was suspended due to the finan-cial crisis. Van de Velde was profoundly disappointed. The museum was only finally built thir-teen years later, though much smaller than originally planned. Van de Velde extend-ed the simple structure twice, and today it forms the core of the Kröller Müller Mu-seums in Otterlo, Holland.

Henry van de Velde: Kettle with réchaud (1922-

1925)


725: Model of the ‘Prince Baudouin’ mail steamer (1934)

A mail steamer? Yes, even ships belonged to the repertoire of the multi-talented Henry van de Velde. In the 1930s, he designed the mail steamer Prince Baudouin, on show here as a model, and a second ship as well. Van de Velde was responsible for the entire interior de-sign, from the floors to furniture and the lamps, which are shown on the photos. Van de Velde also gave the steamer its very elegant shape. He received this extensive public commis-sion from the Société Cockerill shipyard, at that time one of the largest industrial com-panies in Belgium. Van de Velde had returned to the country of his birth in 1926 – after spending over twenty-five years away, in Germany – first in Berlin, then in Weimar –, in Switzerland and, finally, in Holland. His old friend, author and socialist Camille Huysmans, now Minister for Arts and Edu-cation, had strongly advocated van de Velde’s return to the Belgian King. To begin with, van de Velde was often at-tacked in Belgium for his ‘pro-German’ attitudes. Yet after the initial difficulties, his new start in his old home country

proved to be positive. Now well over 60 years old, van de Velde was awarded nu-merous private and state commissions. Even after he officially retired in the mid-1930s, he was an active and busy consult-ant for the government. In this role, as you can also see in this room, he designed new railcars and their interiors for the Belgian state railways. Incidentally, the state railway logo he cre-ated at that time is still in use today.

Model of the ‘Prince Baudouin’ mail steamer

(1934)


726: Max Elskamp: Salutations, dont d’angélique (1893)

The cover for Max Elskamp’s Salutations, dont d’angéliques, a volume of poetry, was one of van de Velde’s first book designs. In these early experiments, his designs were not completely free from figurative art. Max Elskamp, a Belgian poet, asked his friend van de Velde to align the cover design with the content. As a result, the decoration evokes the Annunciation scene, which is also referenced in the title of the collection – “Salutations, including angelic ones”. The lines also include the faintly suggested contours of an angel’s wings and halo of the Virgin Mary. Van de Velde confidently ignored all the prevailing practices of book design in his day. He was not interested in creating a cover which simply reflected or illustrated the content. Instead, he also wanted his abstract decorative design to evoke feelings and emotions – and to achieve that, he looked to the power of the line.

Books form one of the recurring themes running through van de Velde’s entire life, and he himself wrote numerous theo-retical works. In that sense, it’s not that surprising to discover that when he first turned to craft work in the early 1890s, he was drawn to book design. In van de Velde’s opinion, the book had two functions. On the one hand, the con-tents should provide a stimulus for the reader and, on the other, its contents should be aesthetically presented – in oth-er words, function and beauty are mutual-ly dependent.

Max Elskamp: Salutations, dont d’angélique (1893)


727: Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1908)

For ten years, Henry Van de Velde worked on the design of this book. In 1897, Harry Graf Kessler had commissioned his friend van de Velde to produce a deluxe edition of Also sprach Zarathustra – Thus Spoke Zar-athustra – by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. What an honour! Van de Velde had been intensively reading Nietzsche since the late 1880s. Nietzsche’s writings had profoundly influenced him, and were one reason for his change of direction towards the arts and crafts. For this book, unlike his earlier designs, van de Velde exclusively employed ab-stract decorative elements. Moreover, he does not restrict his design to the cover, but also prescribed the paper, borders, orna-ments, colours and typeface.

The text is structured to resemble a col-umn. On a trip to Italy, van de Velde was inspired by the simple, clear shapes of antiquity – and his textual column is dec-orated by a capital of golden decorative elements. He filled the gaps with smaller versions of the same pattern to represent the column’s surface. The colour gold is the only connection between the design and content. It creates the impression of the golden rays of the sun flashing off the stones of the textual column. When Zara-thustra is introduced, his first words also address the sun. “You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine!“ ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ is Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous work. There was a marked surge in interest in Nietzsche's writings after his death in 1900, and so it is hardly surprising that two-thirds of van de Velde’s luxury edition was already sold before it was published.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus

Spoke Zarathustra) (1908)


728: Desk with book cases, UB Ghent (from 1920)

This desk comes from the Ghent University Library, and was designed by Henry van de Velde in the mid-1930s, together with the entire library building for the Institute of Art History and Archaeology. On the pho-tos, you can see the soaring ‘Boekentoren’ – Dutch for ‘Book Tower’ – today one of the Flemish city’s main landmarks. The University Library was one of van de Velde’s largest architectural projects in his long career. Although this major building complex could only be completed in stages due to the outbreak of the Second World War, it was nonetheless actually finished – as were all the other state architectural commissions van de Velde received after his return to Belgium. This fact was, for him personally, a cause of great joy and belated gratification, since his early pro-jects had too often come to nothing. It was not without a certain pride that he recount-ed in his memoirs an incident with former US President Herbert Hoover: “When the ambassador asked Hoover what had been his strongest impression on his short visit to Belgium, the former President answered: ‘The library tower in Gent, of course!’ The ambassador had expected any other an-swer.”

Incidentally, van de Velde had also worked at the University of Ghent – start-ing from 1926, the year he returned to Belgium. Even though he was self-taught, he had been officially appointed as a Pro-fessor of Design and Architecture. But the greatest honour he received was the state commissions for the Belgian pavilions at the World’s Fairs of 1937 and 39 in Paris and New York. These works also brought van de Velde well-deserved though belat-ed fame in his own country.

Desk with book cases, UB Ghent (from 1920)


729: Oscar Jespers: Portrait of Henry van de Velde (c. 1930)

In this granite portrait bust, Belgian sculp-tor Oscar Jespers has exaggerated the shape of Van de Velde’s strikingly elongated head. The style of this conical sculpture distantly evokes works by indigenous art-ists. Jespers was one of the teachers at the de-sign school Institut Supérieur des Arts Dé-coratifs, which Van de Velde founded in 1926 in Brussels at the request of the Bel-gian government. Here, just as at the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, the guiding principle was ‘rational design’. In his memoirs, van de Velde called the new Institute in Brus-sels the ‘third citadel of modernity’ – after the School of Arts and Crafts and Bauhaus. When the Institut Supérieur was opened, van de Velde was already well over 60 years old, but Belgium was not to be the last phase of his life.

During the Second World War, he was involved as an artistic advisor on rebuild-ing roads and bridges – under the German occupying forces. For this reason, he was accused of collaboration with the Nazis after the war. The animosity towards van de Velde was so intense that in 1947, when he was 84 years old, he decided to leave his native country again. With the help of friends, he found a place to live in a small village in Switzerland. There, he spent the last ten years of his life, largely occupied with writing his memoirs – and working on them for up to eight hours a day. Van de Velde, the ‘father of the New Style’ died in Zurich in 1957, aged 94.

Oscar Jespers: Portrait of Henry van de Velde

(c. 1930)

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