The colours of Van der Leck

The interior is characterised by warm, bright colours: vermillion red, cornflower blue, and canary yellow, combined with light and dark grey and brown. The furnishing fabrics came from Metz & Co., including a range of colours designed by artist Bart van der Leck (1876-1958). In the sitting room and library Van der Leck’s colours in the yellow office chair and orange-red armchairs form accents against a more neutral palette of brown, bronze and beige. In the bedrooms and dining room the situation is reversed: here Van der Leck’s colours are used for the large expanses: red dining room cabinets, blue curtains and yellow for the floor. As far as we know, Sonneveld House was the first interior to make use of Van der Leck’s fabrics.

Metz & Co was a highly respected department store that primarily served a stylish and well-healed clientele from Het Gooi, Wassenaar and The Hague. The company was also committed to producing and promoting modernist furniture by architects and artists such as Marcel Breuer, Vilmos Huszár, J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit Rietveld, Hein Salomonson and Bart van der Leck. In the late 1930s the highly rectilinear Functionalist designs in Metz & Co’s range were gradually replaced by friendlier and more organic forms.