Henry van de Velde (designer) Belgian, Antwerp 1863 – 1957 Zurich
Société Van de Velde & Company (manufacturer)
Bloemenwerf Side Chair designed 1895 Elm, leather, brass; h. 37 5/8 in. (95.6 cm) Provenance: Private collection, Antwerp; private collection, Berlin; sale, Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, December 15, 2010, lot 36; sold to Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, Stamford, Connecticut, 2010 – 11. Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2011 (2011.234)
Henry van de Velde gave up painting in 1892 for a career in architecture and design. In 1895 he completed his first house, which was built for his own family in the town of Uccle, near Brussels. Bloemenwerf House, as it was called, became a showcase for his belief in the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, the integration of all aspects of living into an artistically unified whole. To that end, all of the furnishings in his home, from door fixtures to wallpaper, had the same patterns of curvilinear embellishment and the same flowing, elegant shapes designed in the Jugendstil style, a more rectilinear and less asymmetrical variant of the international movement generally known as Art Nouveau. This elm and leather side chair is a variant of the suite of chairs originally made for Van de Velde’s dining room. It was a highly successful design that many of his clients requested for their homes. He produced the same chair in many different finishes, including exotic woods such as padouk and bubinga as well as mahogany and oak, and with seats that varied from the original simple woven rush to fabrics and leather. JA
1891 – 96
67