A rare surviving long length of fabric from the Netherlands Nieuwe Kunst art movement. Theodoor Willem Nieuwenhuis (1866-1951) Nieuwenhuis was one of the three founders of the Nieuwe Kunst, a Netherlands form of Jugenstijl or Art Nouveau, influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement in England. Nieuwenhuis was a follower of Morris and William Crane.
with a small repeat brocaded design (2 x 2 1/4 in or 5 x 6 cm) of stylised flowerheads in a grid in dark green on a natural ground cotton, 3ft 10 in x 5 ft 2 in in or 1.17 x 1.58 m long
Excellent apart from a 1 in or 2.5 cm slit in centre of fabric and another at edge 4 ft 3 in or 1.3 from one end. There are another couple of small holes near other slits to the very edge of the fabric. This is strong enough for upholstery use.
Theodoor Willem Nieuwenhuis designed the interior for the Scheepvart building in Amsterdam, originally for a shipping company, now the Amrath Hotel. The old photos are from a Rijks Museum publication from 1972, Art Nouveau,Jugenstijl, Nieuwe Kunst which shows their latest acquisitions including two interiors by Theo Nieuwenhuis as well as 3 pages of textiles designed by him. You can see the similarities with our fabric. Theo Nieuwenhuis is shown on the right of this 1894 portrait, together with his colleagues who would become emblematic of the applied arts department of the firm Van Wisselingh & Co., which founded a furniture and crafts workshop in Amsterdam in 1898. The painting shows the young men when they were around thirty years old and thus predates their commercial success with Van Wisselingh & Co. Nieuwenhuis' fabrics are well represented in the Rijks museum . The Wolfsonian Museum in Miami who also hold Nieuwenhuis's work From: www. lotusgreenfotos.blogspot.com/search/label/nieuwenhuis
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