On the coffee table next to the sofa there is a unique cube-shaped vase by the designer Andries Copier, designed in the nineteen twenties for the Leerdam Glass Factory. Please do not touch the vase. It was an obvious choice for the Sonnevelds to choose their flower vases from the range produced by the Leerdam Glass Factory, because its creations were inspired by Modernism. According to the Modernist philosophy, the quality of the material, the technical production and the function were crucial and determined the form. Copier used geometric shapes such as circles and rectangles, breaking with the tradition of organic shapes and richly cut glass. The cubical vase in particular was exceptionally difficult to produce from a technical point of view. The vase was blown into a wooden mould known as a ‘blockhead’. The hot glass had to be blown into the corners without sticking to the wooden mould. The vase was only on the market for a short while, appearing for the last time in the 1935 sales brochure under the title “The enticement of the new”. The Leerdam Glass Factory offered the vase in clear glass and in what was at the time a newly-introduced colour described as “grey-violet”. The Sonneveld family chose a cube vase in a clear, satin-finished variant. You can see one of the same vases on the coffee table. Specially for Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Rotterdam designer Richard Hutten made a vase in 2014 that was based on the cubical vase and a rounded vase of Copier. His vase is therefore called the Hutten Copier Vase 15; it can be purchased from the Nieuwe Instituut bookshop.
If you'd like to know more about the Nieuwe Bouwen movement, press A. To hear more about the furniture, soft furnishings and works of art in this room, press C.