Jan de Jong Custom-Made Large Cabinet in Grey Lacquered Pine and Copper

Jan de Jong, large cabinet, lacquered pine, copper, the Netherlands, 1973

This generously sized cabinet was commissioned for a private home and designed by Jan de Jong, who studied with the Dutch Benedictine monk and architect Dom Hans van der Laan and was deeply influenced by him. Van der Laan taught courses in architectural theory at the Cursus Kerkelijke Architectuur (Course in Ecclesiastical Architecture) in ’s-Hertogenbosch. De Jong attended these courses and became one of van der Laan’s most dedicated students and followers. Through this mentorship, he absorbed the principles of the Bossche School, including the theory of proportions and the concept of the “plastic number.”

Aligned with their theoretical pursuits, both Van der Laan en De Jong valued the design of individual objects and architecture equally. Their approach centers on perceiving liturgy as a transformative process, elevating ordinary actions to a sacred realm. With its restrained character and ascetic formal language, the furniture and liturgical items seamlessly integrate into the comprehensive design of the buildings.

All the furniture that the men designed is constructed from wooden planks, primarily pine, fastened using hinge nails thoughtfully placed following the 'extrusion' pattern. When viewed from the side, the ending of the planks and the foundational wood to which they are affixed are both visible. The furniture is predominantly painted in an array of earthy tones like brown and grey, with the occasional use of maroon and blue.

Biography
Jan de Jong (1917–2001) was a Dutch twentieth-century architect and a key representative of the Bossche School, a post-war architectural movement founded by the architect and Benedictine monk Hans Dom van der Laan (1904–1991). This movement is characterized by austere brick façades, a rhythmic arrangement of windows, exposed concrete crossbeams, and grey-painted walls.

De Jong began his career as a carpenter and, around the time of the Second World War, worked his way up to become an architect. Over the course of his career, he developed a diverse body of work encompassing various building types. His architecture was strongly influenced by the proportional theory devised by van der Laan, which emphasizes ideal spatial relationships. Van der Laan argued that natural space is too vast for human experience and that it is the architect’s task to shape spaces that correspond to human scale. From this perspective, proportion, rather than construction technique or visual appearance, forms the essence of architecture.

A central principle of the Bossche School is the “plastic number,” a proportional system derived from the golden ratio, which De Jong frequently applied in his designs.