Description

Original oakwood lounge sofa by Bas Van Pelt; Seating group; Easy Chairs; Dutch Modernism; Producer: Schaik en Berghuis   Bas van Pelt Bas J. van Pelt, Dutch furniture designer and interior designer. Winning a small competition in 1924 was enough for Bas van Pelt to make a definitive choice for the design profession. After working in a printing company, he ended up in Overschie in 1927, in the furniture factory of J.C. Jansen, his later father-in-law the furniture manufacturer J.C. Jansen from Overschie. Here he drew his first designs in various styles. Sometimes in the style of the Amsterdam School, sometimes in a sober, austere style that seems more akin to that of designers such as Hendrik Wouda (1885-1946) or Jan Muntendam (1882-1938). My Home furnishing In 1931, at the insistence of his father-in-law, Bas van Pelt eventually took over the furniture business "My Home Furnishing" in The Hague in 1931 and made a successful business in the field of modern home furnishing. My Home / Bas van Pelt focused from the outset on modern furniture, the design of which in The Hague at the beginning of the 1930s was still strongly determined by the designs of Wouda, Alons and Spanjaard. Van Pelt was one of the first designers to also largely use third-party products, which were more affordable due to their serial numbers, such as Thonet, D3 and Gispen in his interior designs. The company flourished with this approach, which resulted in branches in Amsterdam, Enschede and Maastricht (Kunstzaal de Gulden Roos). Collaboration of Jan Piets since 1936 On May 10, 1940, during the bombings of Rotterdam, the storage sites in the Schouwburgstraat in The Hague were destroyed by a stray bomb. This event made Bas van Pelt decide to actively participate in the resistance. Between 1943 and 1945, the country house "de Pal" in Emst was used as a hiding place and ammunition depot. Bas van Pelt officially remained director of my home, but his father was registered as director in his place. In the last years of the war, the business was kept going by two employees. From May 1944 Bas van Pelt was imprisoned in various concentration camps and on May 24, 1945, a few days after the liberation of the concentration camp, he died. After the Second World War, Van Pelt's widow first took over the management of the company. From 1953 she was increasingly assisted by her daughter Janni and his husband Dick Brouwers. These young designers transformed the company into a real Goed Wonen firm, which they renamed in 1956 as a tribute to the founder as "Bas van Pelt Binnenhuisarchitektuur". The company was doing well and employed several designers such as Cor van Alten, Bram van den Berg and Bob Windau. From the 1970s onwards, interior designs would increasingly be composed of functionalist furniture of Dutch or international origin.