Design History Continues

282 table designs by Henry van de Velde, around 1,100 design drawings and a book edition are now online. The digital catalogue raisonné is freely available worldwide at www.wvz-henryvandevelde.de.

Van de Velde was one of the most influential designers of the early 20th century. Between the 1890s and the 1940s, he designed style-defining everyday objects in metal, textiles, ceramics, wood and other materials. Since 2025, the first digital catalogue raisonné, with over 1,900 designs, has been setting new standards. Illustrations with a zoom function accompany the information on year of design, materials, dimensions, manufacturers, clients, surviving examples and their provenance.

Following the publication in August 2025 of 354 models of seating and reclining furniture as well as 24 pieces of wickerwork furniture, with around 2,300 illustrations and two scholarly essays on the furniture, the Museum Directorate of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar is now releasing 282 new table designs by the Belgian, who worked in Weimar between 1902 and 1917. On the occasion of the Weimar research project, the ENSAV de La Cambre university in Brussels had 957 drawings out of 2,789 plans from the artist’s estate restored and digitised. The Belgian school of design founded by Henry van de Velde, which will celebrate its centenary in 2027, holds large parts of the artist’s estate and is a cooperation partner of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

Even beyond this milestone, the two institutions are continuing their close cooperation. As Dr Annette Ludwig, Director of the Museums of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and head of the research project, affirms: “Thanks to the outstanding collaboration with La Cambre and the trusting and generous support of our funders, the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation and the Henry van de Velde Family Foundation, this digital catalogue raisonné enables us to set standards in every respect. Continuously ‘growing’ with new research findings and thus always up to date, the catalogue raisonné provides unrestricted, round-the-clock, worldwide access and thereby contributes significantly to the further study and visibility of this great designer.”

With 167 designs, the entire Velde drawings holdings of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are also being published in the online catalogue raisonné. These design and construction drawings are decisive for the attribution of the furniture.

The three-volume book edition on van de Velde’s metal, textile and ceramic works, published between 2009 and 2016 by Seemann Henschel Verlag Leipzig and financed by the German Research Foundation and the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation - containing scholarly contributions and in part out of print - is now available for digital page-turning within the online catalogue raisonné. 

The online catalogue raisonné is being continuously expanded: by 2027, the catalogue entries for the furniture will be completed with around 500 additional models.

>> For images, please check here (password: WVZ2026)

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