Product Description
Hendrik Petrus Berlage Holland Rare Architectural Candelabrum c. 1900
HENDRIK PETRUS BERLAGE (1856 – 1934) Netherlands
BECHT & DYSERINCK for ‘t Binnenhuis
Rare Architectural Candelabrum c. 1900
Riveted and detailed “Eiffel Tower” like form in brass and copper with four feet, small cut out designs and two bobeche trays supporting five candles.
H: 14″ x W: 8 1/4″ x D: 8 1/4″
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, a Dutch architect and designer attended the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and a year later switched to architecture. Berlage enrolled in 1875 in the architecture department of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Through 1878 Berlage studied in Zurich under Gottfried Semper, whose teachings had a lasting influence on his work. After finishing these studies, Berlage spent three years traveling in Germany (1879) and Italy (1880-1881) before returning to his native Amsterdam. From 1881 Berlage was employed by the Amsterdam architect Theodor Sanders and from 1884 Berlage was a partner in the business until he opened his own practice in 1889. In 1884 he submitted a design for the projected Commodity Exchange (Beurs van Berlage) in Amsterdam, winning the competition in 1896. This building, completed in 1903, was Hendrik Paulus Berlage’s first important commission, which also solidified his reputation. Also in Amsterdam and at this same time, Berlage built the Diamond Guild building (1897-1900). In 1900 along with the architect and designer Jacob van den Bosch, Hendrik Paulus Berlage opened the gallery, “‘t Binnenhuis”. They sold their own designed furniture and objects they from 1900-1929. In 1900 Berlage was also commissioned to plan a southern extension of Amsterdam. This was Berlage’s most important contribution to urban planning and he worked on the project until 1915. In 1911 Berlage went to the US, where he saw the new buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. Berlage built his own house in The Hague and moved into it with his family in 1913. The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (1919-1935) was Berlage’s last important building, however it was not completed until shortly after his death. Hendrik Petrus Berlage was the founder of the “Amsterdam School” and was a pioneer of modern architecture in the Netherlands. In his 1905 essay “Gedanken über Stil in der Baukunst”, Berlage fiercely criticized 19th-century historicizing architecture as pompous, reserving his praise for the austere simplicity of early period styles. His criticism was severe since he stated flatly that historicizing architecture was all appearance rather than reality, was not art; too much was imitation, more iron was used than stone, and so on. Hendrik Petrus Berlage was therefore an early critic of Historicism even though his Amsterdam Exchange still reveals Romanesque features.
Hendrik Petrus Berlage Holland Rare Architectural Candelabrum c. 1900
GEORGE JAKOB HUNZINGER (1835-1898) Germany/ USA
Chair 1876
Yellow and blue painted elaborately turned wood, blue thread woven covered metal band mesh seat (original condition)
Marks: George Hunzinger Patent 1876
Illustrated: The Furniture of George Hunzinger, Invention and Innovation in Nineteenth-Century America, Barry R. Harwood (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1997) p.103.
H: 32″ x D: 17″ x W: 20″
GEORGE JAKOB HUNZINGER (1835-18989) USA
George Hunzinger emigrated in the 1850s from the Black Forest region of Germany where his family had worked as cabinetmakers since the 17th century. Settling in New York, he joined a community of 3,000 German furniture makers but soon distinguished himself as a maker of patent furniture and “fancy chairs”. Hunzinger’s innovative designs are often associated with the development of the Aesthetic Movement in America. By the 1870s, his chairs were sought after by many Americans as accent pieces for their parlors. The woven mesh or upholstery of these innovative chairs follows the original intention of the maker and the turned frame has an avant-garde, colorful and rather contemporary feeling painted in a combination of a rich ochre yellow and cobalt blue, a color combo that was highly prized for it’s eccentricity in Victorian America.
LOUIS MAJORELLE (1859-1926) France
MOUGIN FRÈRES Nancy, France
Fiddleback Fern trefoil bowl c. 1900
A rare stoneware example of Majorelle and the L’Ecole de Nancy with a mauve and sea-green glaze, crystalline formations in interior in a trefoil loped form with fiddleback ferns at each interval.
Marks: Majorelle. de (impressed facsimile signature) MOUGIN NANCY, 10.K , L
Illustrated: Majorelle: Une Aventure Moderne, Roselyne Bouvier (Paris:
La Bibliothèque des Arts/Editions Serpenoise, 1991) p. 34, illus. 32.
H: 3 1/4″ x W: 6 3/4″