Interior designer Jan des Bouvrie passed away this morning in his hometown of Naarden. He was 78 years old. According to the family, he died in the arms of his wife and in the presence of his children. He had been ill for some time, including prostate cancer.
Des Bouvrie was born in 1942 in Naarden, where he established an interior design center and restaurant Het Arsenaal in the 1990s, in a monumental military building from the 17th century. He grew up as the only child of parents who had a furniture business in Bussum. After training at the Rietveld Academy, he started his own career as a furniture maker.
In 1969 he made his breakthrough with his cube sofa, a design that was later included in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
White as the predominant color
Des Bouvrie became known for sleek, symmetrical designs, with white as the predominant color. In a time of growing prosperity, he thus influenced the taste of ordinary Dutch people, who therefore spent more on their interiors and also changed furnishings more often. Des Bouvrie replaced brown as the predominant color in the Dutch interior with white.
All his life he was associated with sleek white interiors, and wore white clothing himself. Over time, he also used bright colors more often to complement and contrast, but his preference for white remained. He himself said that this was because he yearned for light and space since his stuffy childhood. “I was born in a small room above the store without windows. I have always instinctively searched for the light”.
He was known not only for his use of the color white, but also for his numerous media appearances:
In his own words, he worked for rich and poor, and he also furnished apartments in Almere. But he found his clients mainly in the ‘nouveau riche’, the new rich, whose villas he furnished.
He moved in circles of the jet set and became very rich himself, which he liked to brag about. He drove a Porsche all his life, collecting cars and art, and buying real estate. In his own words, he was successful because he linked creativity with business acumen and publicity talent.
Especially in the 90s he was ubiquitous in the media. He then had his own weekly television program, TV Woonmagazine, the tabloid press wrote constantly about the parties, openings and dinners at which he was present and his flyers were in furniture stores.
Craftsman
Although art exhibitions of his work were held, Des Bouvrie did not call himself an artist, but a craftsman. “I’m not making a sofa you can’t sit on,” he said. He thought he had become a good designer because he was severely dyslexic. Barely able to read made him look all the better, he said.
Des Bouvrie had several problems with the tax authorities. In 2010, he was even arrested on suspicion of tax fraud, together with his client real estate trader Evert Kroon. Des Bouvrie came to a settlement that he had deliberately defrauded the tax authorities was not made plausible. Des Bouvrie said about this: “I don’t do anything black”.