///.
jS
is
After these French pieces van dc Vcldc's great desk of 1896 impressive in its radicaHsni and its tautness. There is neither
the
elephantnie
massiveness of ValHn's
Gaillard's half-concealed
///.
7()
///.
So
dining
sympathy with the
room nor Van
classic past.
de Velde impressed Germany much when he first showed in 1897. Indeed Germany started a little later than Belgium and France, but for a short time men of strong personality joined Art Nouveau and produced outstanding work. Otto Eckmann, better known as a typographer and decorator of books, designed furniture for the Grand Duke of Hessen about 1 898, surprisingly structural, considering his free use of natural forms in the books he decorated. The solution of the seeming contradiction must be van de Velde. Richard Riemerschmid's chairs are more English in their inspiration, and he was indeed among those who, when he turned away from Art Nouveau, did so for social as well as aesthetic reasons. The greatest ornamental originality in
77 The more chaste furniture of Eugene Gaillard, such as this rosewood canape of 191 1, paraphrases classic French furniture in Art Nouveau language