HENK
DUIJN
&
HUBÈRT
VAN DER
MEER

FABRIC
HOUSE

‘I like to use fabric in a way that resists the baggage of its cultural connotations, where its origins are not the dominant thing. My challenge is to combine pieces to make something new and personal for the house, where I isolate the beauty and develop a distinct aesthetic.’

Hubèrt van der Meer

Using the reverse side of the fabric to line the walls, with organic forms painted on the floor, this landing space features a found replica of a Brancusi sculpture.

The fire surround is covered in mottled sheets of vintage book endpapers, with the coral adding textural interest.

The fabric for these walls was reclaimed from Henk and Hubèrt’s previous house in Antwerp. The covered chair, with its strip of black, is lined up with the wall behind.

A carved Indonesian statue sits on a piece of timber fashioned to look like a book. Tonally, the marble and the woven background have a compatibility despite their differing geography.

The original geometric tiles set the scene for a Saarinen Tulip table surrounded by iron chairs sourced in a flea market. At the rear of the room is a 16^th century baronial Scottish chest, and on the wall a lamp by Henk features a net sleeve to diffuse the light.

Gold and black batik fabric sets up an interesting dynamic with the moody green paintwork.

Hubèrt’s workroom converts into a guest bedroom when needed. The bed cover and cushions are all made from his remnant fabric collections.

Creating a display for their ceramic collections, this presentation allows objects, sourced from markets, to take on a certain gravitas, even if damaged.

HENK DUIJN & HUBÈRT VAN DER MEER

FABRIC HOUSE

The journey to Henk and Hubèrt’s house in a village in the Aude in southern France started with a mere thread of connection. I had admired a painting in the apartment of interior designer Don Cameron. He had bought it from his Dutch artist friend, Henk Duijn, who also ran a B&B in Antwerp (alongside his partner Hubèrt van der Meer) where Don stayed regularly. Don showed me the box that the muted, gestural work had arrived in – it was utilitarian but crafted, with the broad brushstrokes of the painting inside echoed on its surface. I was smitten with this combination of art and presentation.

So, when it came to researching content for this book, Don and I discussed Henk and Hubèrt, who had, in the meantime, moved from their capacious 1913 townhouse in Antwerp to a stone property on the cusp of a tiny village in France. ‘They have a very unusual approach – between the academic and Dada. But it will be a work-in-progress,’ Don warned.

In fact, the way they approach the house, it will always be a work-in-progress. The notion of completion, of a fixed point when they can dust their hands and say they are done, is not their style. ‘Our goal is not to finish, but to keep on changing and evolving,’ says Hubèrt. ‘Decoration can be different in time; different furniture will create another story.’

The house started as two. Sited with the village to one side and fields on the other, it suits their sense of being part of a community but with room to breathe. There is a deep, south-facing garden, planted and tended, which has been reconfigured to meet their desire for an outdoor space and to allow light into the front rooms.

A tour of the house reveals Henk and Hubèrt’s architectural thinking and their intense and delightful decorative preoccupations. ‘We lived in the house in a primitive way for a few months before anything was done – it was like camping – with boxes of our possessions all around us,’ says Henk. ‘But it did give us time to experience the house, and really understand what needed to be done and how we wanted to live.’

Working with an immensely patient craftsman/builder and his wife, they retained, shifted, demolished, inserted, repaired and reshaped. ‘We were both excited and nervous to play the architect,’ says Hubèrt. ‘I was Architect One and Henk Architect Two, and every day we would have a new thought, a new scheme.’

Coaxing the two houses into one by moving a badly positioned staircase and opening up a warren of rooms, the house came together in what now has a pleasing flow, as one space leads to another, drawing the eye from one space to the next with enticing hints of colour, fabric and objects. ‘At last we have our own version of an enfilade,’ says Hubèrt.

The process Henk and Hubèrt undertake is layered and deeply considered; slowly taking shape through trial and error. The dining room is painted white (to clear the mind) as they ponder colour options – limited only by the excess paint they have brought from Antwerp. At present, a heavily carved 16^th century Scottish baronial chest sits on top of the house’s original optical tiling adjacent to a Saarinen table with a new marble top. A ceramic ‘grotto’ matches the chest’s idiosyncrasy and sets up the dynamism of the slightly grotesque, while a wall lamp, designed by Henk, emits a diffuse light through the sleeve of an Indonesian garment. The decorating world talks in terms of contrasts, but here it is pushed to extremes.

In fact, it is a house where you have to peer at things closely to understand them. There is an ambiguity around wall coverings as one considers whether they are paper, fabric or paint. Seemingly abstract framed artworks turn out to be lace teaching samples from a nunnery; a plinth to hold a tiny sculpture is fashioned from wood to look like a book. All is not as it seems.

Brought from their former home in Antwerp, this large cabinet had to be modified to fits in its new position. Coral from flea markets and vintage stores has been collected over decades.

A Seventies glass and chrome table is paired with Saarinen Tulip chairs in a library.

One of the most distinctive aspects of the interior is the way the walls are tailored by Hubèrt, who was trained in fashion and has a nuanced understanding of fabrics. ‘I approach a room like I am making a collection; designing one silhouette and then another – different but complementary – with fabric always as the starting point,’ he says.

How he looks at fabric is telling. While he appreciates the beauty in material from a wide range of ethnicities, he is keen to separate it from its cultural and historical references and give it a new identity. A sample fabric from fashion designer Dries Van Noten can be combined with an 18^th century French curtain and a Japanese rayon kimono from the Sixties. ‘For me it is important that the origin is not the dominant thing,’ says Hubèrt. ‘I like to isolate the beauty and create a new language with the fabrics.’

The fabric walls create differing characters within the house as Hubèrt salvages sections of old Indian silks, priests’ robes and pelmet fabric from a French chateau, and pieces them together carefully. Often, he favours the reverse side of the fabric as it imparts a more muted, textural version of the patterns. Fine fabric-covered battens separate paint colours or create a third layer between two existing fabric panels. Each panel is an artwork. On the landing, with its chinoiserie walls, Fifties lights and boudoir atmosphere, I ask Hubèrt how hard it was to get the walls this perfect. ‘Very, very difficult,’ he replies. ‘Maintaining the pattern while working around the doors was challenging.’

The house is one of collections amassed over time and with patience. Tiles from the past three centuries, coral, Indonesian sculptures and blue and white porcelain all find a place to be displayed, gathered together in ways that seem meaningful and avoid a sense of clutter. ‘We could not afford the perfect pieces, so would buy the slightly damaged or chipped ones because we did not find that their decorative power was diminished,’ says Henk. Ditto the copy of a Brancusi head found in a thrift shop. ‘Sometimes I like to rotate the head and turn her to the wall, as the shape from that angle is very pleasing.’

Henk’s studio sits in the garden with a view over the fields and a sense of workmanlike order. A cluster of his small, evocative works hangs in a group, spaced perfectly, beside a larger work from an earlier period.

This is a house borne very much from parallel creative personalities. Each has his own space to create, but the house itself is where both sensibilities come together and find decorative solutions that defy the norm. ‘For us, it is a case of ideas over budget – it forces us to be more creative,’ says Hubèrt. ‘It simply takes more time, and we are not in a hurry.’

Henk has collected antique wax seals for many years, keeping them on display in a shallow glass cabinet in his studio.

In Henk’s painting studio, his art pieces are enclosed in stacked, numbered boxes, topped with a collection of religious artefacts.

Early work by Henk hangs alongside his current pieces.