36: J.J.P. OUD, Furniture for Seidlung Weissenhof, Stuttgart < , 8 November 2018 < Auctions

The Boyd Collection – I. Masterworks 8 November 2018

Furniture for Five Row Houses

Architect J.J.P. Oud

J.J.P. Oud was one of several architects to participate in Seidlung Weissenhof, Stuttgart, a 1927 exhibition of modern architectural solutions to contemporary living. The overall settlement included twenty-one projects and sixty-three dwellings designed by seventeen architects and furnished by fifty-five interior designers. For the exhibition Oud designed Five Row Houses that achieved international attention and wide praise for their floor plan and layout. The five houses, numbered five through nine, were furnished by various architects and designers, but Oud himself outfitted number eight. From the color of the walls and the art selected to a table, chairs and stool he designed specifically for the interior, Oud considered living down to the smallest details.

Living room, featuring furniture designed by J.J.P. Oud for Five Row Houses, 1927. Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut/OudJ-ph1838 © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / c/o Pictoright Amsterdam; Kitchen featuring the stool design by J.J.P. Oud for Five Row Houses, 1927. Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut/OudJ-ph408/OudJ-ph1839 © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / c/o Pictoright Amsterdam

Of the exhibition Oud wrote: “I hardly expected my house to arouse any significant interest at the exhibition; however, it is only an attempt to build a proper private dwelling: a problem that hardly plays a part in the field of architecture. Since these days everything, even the smallest things, should be architecture, I had not expected my un-architectural house to attract the attention it did.”

...the aesthetic value of a building from the purity of its relationships, the clarity of the spatial expression by its masses, planes and lines, finally, by the tension of its constructional relief, and not by its ornament...the aesthetic value of sculpture, as an object of use, interior and exterior, as chair, vase, stove, lamp-post, and not as ornament.

J.J.P. Oud

J.J.P. Oud 1890–1963

Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, known simply as J.J.P, was a leading Dutch architect, designer, and urban planner of the modern movement. Born in 1890, he was educated at the Quellinus Arts and Crafts School, Amsterdam, the Rijksnormal School, Amsterdam, and Netherland Delft Technical University in Amsterdam. He later gained practical experience working both in Amsterdam and Munich. In 1917, alongside Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, he became involved with the experimental De Stijl group of avant-garde artists and their influential periodical.

Oud was known for his austere, geometric style which highlighted asymmetry and was void of ornamentation. His earliest modern architectural projects included a movie theater, worker’s housing, and a factory in his hometown of Purmerend between the years of 1906 through 1917. The following year he was appointed housing architect to the city of Rotterdam. Oud believed it was civic duty to provide low-cost, social housing and he won great appeal through his mass-produced and economical designs. Later in his career his architectural projects greatly influenced the International Style which had grown in popularity in the 1920s. Oud also approached furniture design with the same modernist style creating collections for Metz & Co. among others.

Auction Results J.J.P. Oud