“Basically, the Dutch are lazy — they pick something that
already exists and abstract it further,” jokes Dutch museum director Erik
Schilp at the ZuiderZee Museum in northern Holland.
Schilp is a mover-and-shaker in the process of transforming the
60-year-old ZuiderZee from a one-dimensional open-air museum of fishing and
farming culture into a hipper destination that incorporates contemporary
culture, design and art.
Schilp is saying, playfully, that modern Dutch design — and
it is everywhere in this tiny footprint of a country — is rooted in
tradition.
Or, put another way, that rather than jettisoning what has gone
before, the best designers incorporate long-honoured craft in a way that is
unique and modern.
It was reality I’d appreciate again and again as we drove north
from Amsterdam through the provinces of Noord Holland, Fryslân (or Friesland)
and back south and east to the province of Gelderland.
In 1932, the Dutch government dammed the north side of the
salt-water Zuider Zee (“southern sea”) to create two vast fresh-water “lakes”
— one of which is the Ijsselmeer. Around that time, more than 100
historic buildings were relocated to the harbour town of Enkhuizen and
reassembled as the ZuiderZee Museum.
For years this collection that includes fishers’ cottages, a
functioning bakery, a warehouse selling huge wheels of cheese, steam laundry
and a smokehouse where you can sample herring and eel, has drawn hundreds of
thousands of mostly Dutch tourists.
However, “the interest in history for history’s sake is
declining,” Schilp said, so he invited, for example, the Dutch fashion duo of
Viktor and Rolf to put their trendy spin on traditional fishing garb and
textiles, and hang their garments in a museum gallery.
Visitors still explore the delightful village, with its Church
District, canal, harbour and polder with sheep and windmill. But at the
individual houses or shops you’re as likely as not to encounter an exhibit of
contemporary graffiti (on a historic theme) or an avant-garde take on
traditional Delft pottery.
We dined at an elegant restaurant in Enkhuizen and slept on a
ketch moored on the Ijsselmeer. In the morning we headed north on Highway A7
and across the incredible 32-kilometre-long dike (that created the Ijsselmeer)
to Friesland.
At the village of Makkum, we pulled up to a “factory” called
Royal Tichelaar Makkum. The modern single-storey building looked unassuming,
but when we stepped into a large foyer filled with trestle-like tables laden
with ceramic objects of art, I knew this place was unusual. The sale items
— richly decorative bowls and plates, tiles and sculptures in traditional
and contemporary design (and not inexpensive; no souvenir trinkets here)
— were invariably knockdown gorgeous.
Tichelaar Makkum began making ornamental earthenware in 1670,
though its founding as a brickyard dates to 1594, making it the oldest company
in Holland. Today, it is known around the world for exceptional craftsmanship,
if not for an ability to keep tradition alive by incorporating modern
technology and design. (“Tichelaar takes its long history seriously without
being bogged down by it,” says a press release.)
A chic public relations woman explained how Tichelaar’s 70
employees, some of whom have worked here for decades, employ traditional faience
(glazing) techniques. Yet the company recently made international news by
hiring four contemporary Dutch artists to reinterpret the hugely ostentatious
flower “pyramid vases” popular in Holland in the 17
th
century. The
wildly imaginative contemporary “vases” were on display during our visit (the
set can be ordered for 300,000 Euro), before travelling on to New York for an
exhibit.
In south-central Friesland, near Heerenveen, in a landscape of
wind-blown grasses and rippling water, sits a long slab of layered German black
basalt. This is the Belvédère Museum, opened in 2004 and devoted to modern and
contemporary Frysian art.
The austere yet striking museum straddles a
straight-as-an-arrow canal through what was once a sprawling peat bog. One can
imagine the locals cutting and hauling the peat to home or market. Yet at the
far end of the canal stands a 17
th
century Renaissance-style manor
house — just a hint of opulence in a wonderfully stark setting.
The Belvédère Museum was named the most beautiful building in
Holland by Dutch architects in 2006. And I had the opportunity to chat briefly
with architect Eende Schippers, who said of his building: “This is a dramatic
place — open a little bit to the indoors, a little bit to the outdoors.”
While the artists here may not be widely known outside Europe
— Jan Mankes, Chris Beekman, Gerrit Benner and Tinus van Doorn among them
— most worked in traditions that draw on the likes of van Gogh,
Mondriaan, Vermeer and Chagall. Said Schippers: “They liked to do things in a
way that was simple, sober and direct. They worked hard. They were Protestant.
They liked ordinary things.”
From Friesland, we slipped south again to the province of
Gelderland and De Hoge Veluwe National Park. This largest nature reserve in
Holland was, from the early 1900s, the private hunting reserve of industrialist
Anton Kröller. Today, wild boar, the big-horned moufflon sheep Kröller imported
from Corsica and Sardinia, roe deer and other wildlife populate the
5,400-hectare landscape of woods, fen, sand and grasslands.
More than 40 kilometres of cycling paths weave through the
park, and bikes are available for free. The park is dotted with historic
markers, among them the charming St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge that Kröller had
built in a turn-of-the-century art-deco style.
But the jewel in the crown is the Kröller-Müller Museum,
located in the park’s centre. This world-class art gallery was planned and
developed by Kröller’s wife Helena Müller, a noted art collector of the early
20th century, and for whom it is named.
The Kröller-Müller owns the largest collection of Vincent van
Gogh paintings and drawings outside the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. You’ll
see crowd-pleasers like
Terrace of a café at night
, stunning lesser known works, as well as pieces by
the likes of Picasso, Renoir, Monet and Mondriaan. The Kröller-Müller also
features a notable sculpture garden, with pieces by Henri Moore and others.
So again in The Netherlands, art and design, and old and new,
come together in an exotic natural setting. So much for lazy.
• • •
ZuiderZee Museum, www.zuiderzeemuseum.nl
Royal Tichelaar Makkum, www.tichelaar.nl
De Hoge Veluwe National Park, www.hogeveluwe.nl