Interiors by Design: Dutch treat

Quietly seeping into the subconscious of landscape designers and interior designers here on the East End is Le Style Belgique and Hollandaise.

Perhaps it is the timing of our mood. Perhaps it is the restrained honest simplicity. Or perhaps it has been the wild popularity of the lavishly produced coffee-table books published by Betaplus of the Netherlands (available at East End Books and Mecox Gardens).

Almost the opposite thought process of “to freshen up,” the Belgians, and then Dutch, dust it down. They are masters of lathe and plaster and baseboards are minimal with either a simple square cut stone or tile or a 1-inch curved wood shoe moulding. No crowns are used to hide naughty workmanship. Walls enjoy the undulations of plaster. Brick, a common material, is frequently thickly gypsumed over, allowing its bumpy impressions to seep through the matte painted surface.

Reclaimed local stone or cut limestone paves the halls and entries in tones of charcoal, greige and steely blue. These cool floors give way to bleached floors of Flemish oak that are quarter-sawn, limed and waxed, simulating the appearance of hundreds of years of dutifully lye-scrubbed wood. Ceilings reflect the floors with exposed or reclaimed rafters, equally bleached. Double paneled oak doors, French glazed doors, or industrial iron gridded doors swing effortlessly from frames devoid of moulding. If not lightly limed, the wooden doors sport that deeply lustrous almost transparent paint, a specialty of the Dutch, Flemish and French, available here through Fine Paints of Europe in Wainscott and at Benjamin Moore. Doors and paneling are lacquered in Belgium’s particularly edible palettes of raisin, cappuccino, rich chocolate, pale praline and a symphony of warm greys and chilly taupes. These masterful lowland rooms seem born to breathe easily here in our beach communities because of their choice of palette, adherence to natural materials and an edited sense of architectural honesty.

Furthermore, many of our great local purveyors of furnishings and antiques have either subconsciously or consciously showcased an influence of the European lowland style through the selection of their wares.

Sylvester & Co.’s Amagansett store displays much that reflects the Dutch penchant for bleached and lime oak in their round pedestal dining table and their coffee tables.

With a Belgian chunkiness, their slab coffee table and slatted low table feel like driftwood floated over from Europe. Blocky squares of exotic wood make side tables an immovable Belgian presence. An Asian armoire and weathered altar table rustically cross over into the primitive realm of the Dutch predilection. Casual raw linen covers highly elongated sofas in the precise loose manner that Axel Vervoordt, the renowned Flemish designer and antiques dealer, prefers. With their quiet neutral palette and preference for material driven and rather monumental furnishings which are surrounded by light floors and coir rugs and emphasis on modern art, Sylvester & Co., rather convincingly, displays a lowland sensibility.

Balasses House, of course known for their country English imports, showcases items slightly off-kilter enough to qualify for Le Style Hollandaise. A wonderful leather topped metal tubed desk looks as though any Dutch commodore would have been checking his charts unrolled upon its weathered surface. An attractive round vanity mirror looks as though it has been recently plucked from a Brussels townhouse gable and what Vermeer-inspired home could be without Balasses House’s turned brass chandelier, ubiquitous in lowland homes and now coming into a design revival of its own.

On to Mecox Gardens—where Flemish influence holds fast—where one can find an elongated oak sofa table or bar limed and sturdily turned with practical iron rods cuffing the piece together. With low Dutch arches, this ever so practical piece whispers as adulation of weathered materials, architectural integrity and tensile strength, traits in common with the interiors of the Dutch, thank you very much. A round center table with radiating spokes of squared beams could easily pair with their barrel stave chandelier, a very Flemish interpretation of a very French form. Mecox also sells the rough linen and cotton slipcovered upholstery so directly adapted from Vervoordt’s thinly curvaceous shapes and pillow laden sofas.

Moving down the highway, you will find Roark’s hefty bleached farm table and a few other rugged accessories that will enhance this simple style of interior. Surprisingly, Collette, the designer consignment shop, displayed a turned and clamped iron coffee table base that could reflect an austere yet definitive Dutch style.

Fond of industrial practicality and straightforward utilitarianism, the Flemish have promoted the introduction of 19th Century industrial machinery tools and ordinary equipment that can be re-envisioned as center hall tables, dining tables and side tables. If you can get beyond the lush displays of horticulturally leaning gifts, books and pottery, check out Marder’s remarkable cache of 19th century industrial equipment that not only looks radically chic but with all those cogs, chains and sprockets, actually still function.

For my book, Denton and Gartner have the perfect pair of stout woven rush seat chairs that could be the central focus of any room, while next door at Schorr & Dobinsky, no shipment comes in without a once every third month perusal of the Dutch and Belgian markets.

Bulbous Dutch chandeliers in pewter or weathered brass and bull’s-eye mirrors abound at English Country Antiques, while La Belle Maison has an old waxed 17th Century Bahut armoire we all took for that crusty Belgian influence.

Lauren Copin is importing antique Dutch tulip baskets made of cork, while Sag Harbor’s Bloom lays out a succulent spread of thick starched linens in beige, wheat, grey and stone—all those weathery mid-Euro colors. John at Sag Harbor Antiques is known to favor the Dutch Bombay shape and intricate work marquetry—and those black frame mirrors—mysterious and imposing.

Many of the above mentioned shops, as well as most of the bookstores, carry beautiful books celebrating this style. Pick them up and you, too, might realize that all around you the Dutch and Flemish points of view are gaining popularity. I shudder to describe it as “the aesthetic of the moment,” but it certainly is everywhere and by all means cropping up here on the East End.

Marshall Watson is a nationally recognized interior and furniture designer who lives and works in the Hamptons and New York City. Reach him at 105 West 72nd Street, Suite 9B, New York, NY 10023.