Please do not touch the tableware. The canary yellow china on the dining table is a breakfast service dating to 1924 by the Dutch architect H.P. Berlage and the designer Piet Zwart. Zwart was a draughtsman at Berlage’s architecture firm, where he designed a set of tableware with a striking hexagonal shape. Not only the colour and shape are unusual, but so is the production process. This tableware is in fact made of pressed glass, in a process that involves the red-hot glass is being poured into a hot cast-iron mould. It has a syrupy texture and sinks down into the mould, and is then cut when the mould is full. There’s a kind of die above the mould that forces the glass firmly into it. The mould is then opened and the glass object is taken out of it using a pair of tongs. Because the mould consists of two halves that are hinged together, there is always a slightly thickened line visible at the object’s seam. That line gives the impression that the item was made from two halves that have been glued together. The breakfast service on the dining table is one of the first examples of modern industrial design in the Netherlands. The 42-piece service is almost complete and no other museum in the Netherlands has such a large set. It was bought specially for Huis Sonneveld in order to show you how modern the interwar period between the two World Wars was. The damask table linen on the dining table is by the artist Chris Lebeau. The Sonneveld family probably bought it when they were furnishing the house in 1933. It has the Pisces motif, a design that Lebeau was commissioned to produce by the Eindhoven textile company Van Dissel & Zonen; in the design, abstract animal and fish motifs are worked into a continuous pattern. Between 1904 and 1939, Lebeau made more than fifty designs for damask linen and his motifs were often taken from nature. No other designer in the Netherlands has so many damask designs to his name. The unique aspect of his working method was that he produced separate designs for each element of the table linen set – such as the tablecloth and the napkins – by combining the basic motif differently for each piece. Lebeau’s table linen was a must-have for every well-to-do, modern woman. The Sonneveld family had at least three such tablecloths with matching napkins, one set for each meal. The tablecloth actually owes more to Art Deco than New Objectivity, which is an exception to the rule here in Huis Sonneveld.
If you would like to hear more about Mrs Sonneveld, press A. For the glassware in the showcase, press B. Or press C for the tableware and tablecloth on the table. Please do not touch the cabinets and the tableware. The next room on this tour, number 8, is one floor higher, next to the stairs.