A few days like no others: Dutch 'Art Deco' and more

A few weeks ago my friend Martine organized 'a few days like no others' in order to bring some international Art Deco lovers together in the Netherlands. We visited some museums and restaurants togheter. Above you see some of the ladies in an Art Nouveau 'period room' in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

The entire group for the day in The Hague.

I wore my little 40's suit consisting of a plissé skirt and bolero jacket.

Combined with my favorite Metz & Co. summer hat

Willemien's dress matched the color scheme of this painting by Jan Toorop. Toorop was an artist that worked around the turn of the last century. The exhibition we visited gave an overview of his work which was quite surprizing because he is best known for his graphic work for a Dutch salad oil brand (hence the style he used for this work is often referred to as salad oil style ;)) but he did so much more!

In the hall of the Gemeentemuseum a late work of the Dutch architect Berlage finished in 1935

Then we went for a tour of the city. Andrés matched the interior of this Ar Nouveau apothecary.

In the evening we dined in Grand Café Central in Gouda that was decorated by the same artist that did the wall paintings in the maginficent Tuschinski theatre.

Here Martine and I are standing befor the wall paintings. We dressed for dinner and I opted for my easy floorlength floral eveningdress because I had to take the outfit with me during the day and wanted to be able to change quickly. Martine is wearing a very good 20's reproduction.

If anyone is planning to have dinner in Gouda the food at the Grand Café is delicious, so together with the decor highly recommended!

The next day was spent in Amsterdam. I skipped the morning programme which was the Tuschinski theatre where I'd been several times before.

As it was quite a hot day I wore this straw hat for the first time together with a 40's floral dress that arrived the evening before by post.

Because the rest got carried away at Tuschinski I had to wait and whilst waiting I visited a little vintage shop I hadn't been to in years. I found all these wonderful flower brooches and metal suspender clips. You can see in the picture above I wore the purple flower right away.

We visted 'Het Scheepvaarthuis' (The Shippinghouse) built between 1913 and 1916. It is considered to be one of the first major works in the so called 'Amsterdamse School'(Amsterdam School) building style that can be seen as a Dutch version of late Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Most buildings in this style were social housing projects and are thus relatively sober but this being the main building for the Amsterdam shipping companies meant it is very lavishly decorated. A lot of symbolism is included like this vertical line looking like an anchor going down.

The starsign big bear by which ships could navigate above the door.

The inner courts are covered with stained glass roofs.

The shipping theme was carried all the way through to the the shape of this roof.

Our group of that day.

The Amsterdam School made wonderful lamp designs.

And a lot of clocks as can be seen in an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum at the moment. I'll just make a little sidetrack to this exhib though I did not technically visited it that day.

This display features all kinds of clocks. As the 100 year anniversary of the Amsterdam School style is celebrated this year there is a big exhibition dedicated to the interiors/furniture that are not always getting as much attention as the architechture but were just as much part of the 'gesamtkunstwerk'.

Here I am at the opening of this exhibition a little over a month ago where I posed with the visitors in a decor together with Ken on the right.

Below some of the furniture in the exhibition, pictures are very dark due to the low light levels in the museum (probably because of the upholstery)

I'd love to have that carpet!

Back to the main theme. In the evening we had dinner at Café Americain that has a beautiful interior from the early 1900's.

This time I got to dress at home so I did not have to think about practicalities. I wore a 1940's chiffon evening dress with a 1930's silk velvet evening cape.

Our entire group dressed for dinner :)

The Tweedride was the next day and officially belonged to the programme as well but I decided to make a separate post about that.

Will be back soon with my adventures in Prague: lots of vintage shopping, outfits and sights!

Birthe