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Document Details : Title: De Blauwe Salon van koningin Emma in Paleis Het Loo Subtitle: De terugkeer van een laatnegentiende-eeuwse vorstelijke zitkamer Author(s): REM, Paul Journal: Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design Volume: 47 Date: 2025 Pages: 45-60 DOI: 10.2143/GBI.47.0.3294951 Abstract : The Blue Salon of Emma (1858-1934), Queen of the Netherlands, has returned to its proper place in Het Loo Palace. The new furnishing of the room, created in the years 1888-1891, was a gift from King William III to his second wife. The original Blue Salon was located in the queen’s quarters in the royal family’s favourite summer palace. But in the year 1900, she had to make way for the husband of her daughter, Queen Wilhelmina. Emma’s properties, including the interior of the Blue Salon, were transferred to a new residence in The Hague. In 1984, Het Loo Palace reopened as a museum. During the restoration that preceded this, historical rooms of the main residents were reconstructed following a chronological order. As a result, Emma’s Blue Salon was set up in the room that had actually been her bedroom. During the recent renovation, which required the palace to be completely emptied, it was decided to return the Blue Salon to its original location. For this reason, door sections were recreated in that room, as well as a new fireplace that was placed against the right wall. The orientation of the salon in the period 1888/1891-1900 is well documented, by means of accounts, quotations, descriptions and photographs. Many of the interior pieces were stored in the repository of Het Loo Palace or in the Royal Collections. Louis Majorelle (1859-1926), who would later rise to fame as a major figure in Art Nouveau, was commissioned to supply furniture. The French designer had become acquainted with the royal couple at an international exhibition in Amsterdam in 1883, and in the following years King William III purchased furniture from Majorelle on several occasions. Majorelle worked mainly in the Louis XV style, working with techniques such as vernis Martin. This technique, a high-quality imitation of Japanese and Chinese varnishing techniques developed by the French Martin brothers in the middle of the eighteenth century, was among Majorelle’s specialities. The designer supplied the furniture as well as the window curtains and the curtains for the fireplace, and their draperies. The purchasing department of the palace, which coordinated the furnishings, relied on Dutch purveyors to the court for supplying wall coverings and rugs, and for a missing mirror. The Amsterdam firm Jansen en Zonen painted the panelling of the room and supplied and installed the wallpaper. A woollen carpet was specially knotted for the room by the Royal Deventer Tapijtfabriek, one of the primary suppliers of carpets to the Dutch palaces for decades. Firma de Bruijn was the leading mirror and frame manufacturer in the east of the Netherlands and supplied a large mirror for the chimney breast, modelled on mirrors already present in Het Loo Palace. Majorelle’s work is hardly present in Dutch museum collections, if at all. Louis Majorelle’s furniture commissioned by King William III is important from an art-historical point of view. They are of high quality and bear witness to the period before Majorelle’s conversion to Art Nouveau. With the Blue Salon, the Netherlands again has a late-nineteenth-century palace salon belonging to a royal consort. |
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