The Sonneveld family comprised Albertus Sonneveld, one of the directors of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, his wife Gésine Sonneveld-Bos and their daughters Puck and Gé. They lived in Sonneveld House from 1933 to 1955. Before moving here, they lived in a stately nineteenth-century townhouse on the leafy Heemraadssingel in the centre of Rotterdam. It was an atmospheric but dark and traditionally designed house with old-fashioned furnishings. When they moved, they left almost everything behind

On the sofa, by the open hearth and on Mrs Sonneveld’s desk are various magazines and a copy of the Algemeen Handelsblad from 1933. We know that the Sonneveld family bought various Dutch and foreign magazines, which were devoured by Mrs Sonneveld and her daughters.At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a growing market for women’s magazines. De Vrouw en haar Huis (The Woman and Her House) was a chic, Dutch monthly women’s magazine that ran from 1906 to 1973,

The kitchen in Sonneveld House was fitted with all mod cons. Only the cooker itself was a little ‘old-fashioned’. It is notable that the family did not opt for an electric stove, which many books of the period advised. Mrs Sonneveld had a practical approach and opted for gas, which was quicker and cheaper. ‘Those enthusiastic housewives who own and value a Dordrecht gas stove assure us it is a wonderful asset.’Electric stoves were popular among a small group of wealthier

The studio was designed for the Sonnevelds’ two daughters. The eldest, Magdalena, nicknamed Puck, was nineteen when the family moved into the house in 1933. Gesine – usually shortened to Gé – was seven years younger. The sisters used the studio for reading, listening to music and entertaining their friends. The studio is the only room in the house with a parquet floor, probably chosen as an ideal surface for dance parties. The studio contains a multifunctional sofa designed by

For Mrs Sonneveld modern living was a status symbol. She had a highly developed sense of luxury: when in public she usually wore jewellery, a long coat preferably with a fur collar, and a hat with a hatpin. The family’s many holiday photographs show that she was always elegantly dressed when travelling. She was conscious of her social position as the wife of a director and considered it important to live in accordance with this status. The new house gave her the opportunity to cultivate

For Mrs Sonneveld modern living was a status symbol. She had a highly developed sense of luxury: when in public she usually wore jewellery, a long coat preferably with a fur collar, and a hat with a hatpin. The family’s many holiday photographs show that she was always elegantly dressed when travelling. She was conscious of her social position as the wife of a director and considered it important to live in accordance with this status. The new house gave her the opportunity to cultivate

Albertus Sonneveld was a self-made man. He worked his way up in the Van Nelle Factory from clerk to director of the tobacco division. He began his fifty-year career at Van Nelle in 1900 at the age of fourteen. In the evenings he studied languages and did vocational training for the tobacco industry, which took him to America for the first time at the age of twenty-four. He was a director of the firm from 1935 until his retirement in 1950. As a director he commanded respect but was not

The Sonneveld family took regular holidays in Europe, including Switzerland, Germany and the Mediterranean. But they also went further afield, to the Canary Islands, the Azores and the Caribbean. The family archive contains numerous photographs of beautiful alpine landscapes and vistas. It is clear that Mr Sonneveld enjoyed taking photographs. In 1932 the Sonnevelds flew in a Zeppelin over the Netherlands from Enschede airfield. It is not surprising that this modern innovation attracted their

Mr and Mrs Sonneveld’s bathroom was the height of modernist luxury in the 1930s. In a period when many houses still had no shower, this bathroom with two washbasins, a shower cabin and a bath (and a heated towel rack) was exceptional. Mr Sonneveld discovered the hydro-massage shower in luxury hotels in America, which he first visited at the age of twenty-four. He had the large shower head and the nine smaller nozzles sent over specially from America. 

Magdalena, the eldest daughter, nicknamed Puck, was nineteen when the family moved to Sonneveld House. She was given the larger of the two children’s bedrooms with a magnificent terrace accessible only from her room. The girls’ rooms had the same furnishings but in different colours: Puck chose blue. When she came to live in the Jongkindstraat in 1933, Puck had already completed her education. Following her years at the Eerste Gemeentelijke Lyceum for girls in Rotterdam she did not

From the summer of 1935 Puck spent almost a year in America, where she stayed with two of her father’s business associates: the Kennedy and Miller families in Paducah, Kentucky. Kennedy supplied uncut tobacco to the Van Nelle Factory.Numerous lunches, picnics, tea parties and dinners were organised to welcome Puck in America. And they were not small gatherings: shortly after her arrival, 175 guests assembled on the roof terrace of the Ritz Hotel for a lunch in honour of the &lsquo

During her husband’s lengthy business trips, Mrs Sonneveld took charge of the housekeeping and the management of the family’s two maids. Jeanne Schreuder was nineteen when she began working for the family in 1931. Her older colleague Josephine Müller, known as ‘Finie’, came from Germany. In the 1920s and 1930s large numbers of unmarried German girls and women crossed the border looking for jobs in domestic service in Dutch homes.The Sonnevelds’ maids earned 27.50

Like her sister Puck, Gé also chose the colour of her own bedroom: she chose yellow. Gé (short for Gesine), the youngest daughter, was born on 16 December 1920 and was thirteen when the family moved to Sonneveld House. Like her sister, she attended the Lyceum in Rotterdam, where she was a good student. Friends from this period recall how Gé’s mother sometimes collected her from school in her car; she was the only woman in Rotterdam with her own car. Following secondary school, Gé studied