Rustenhoven 250 years old
History - Purchase - Antique Shop - Barometer Museum - Garden - Snow Pics - Private - Sale - Present - Rustenhoven on Postcards - Rustenhoven in Adverts - Contact
The flag at full-mast at the official opening of the antique shop on 6 September 1975.
Our neighbour Baron van Boetzelaer of Eyckenstein Manor standing next to Jan Fentener van Vlissingen, former owner of Rustenhoven.
On a sunny day in September 1975 invitees and press stood together on the lawn of Rustenhoven, when the brass band arrived. After their serenade, I invited Mrs Pamela Fentener van Vlissingen to open the front door of our new shop.
Mrs Pamela Fentener van Vlissingen talking about their happy years at Rustenhoven before they sold it.
The Maartensdijk brass band played and the guests walked in to inspect the shop and the building.
During the next months, we created a restoration workshop for the cabinet maker and prepared the private rooms of my parents and for ourselves. To save money, I had done the whole removal alone, filling and emptying builder’s containers day after day, using special trolleys to handle heavy furniture. It was summer in Holland and we had no rain, so we could transport everything in the open air.
Containers came and went day after day. The oak cupboards were heavy to carry around, but it kept me slim...
Before the end of the year, the whole removal was done. The heavy oak cupboards, dressers, desks, tables and chests were far too heavy to carry up and down the stairs. One of the first things we did after the removal of the shop, was getting an elevator into the building to deal with the heavy loads. The house had two staircases, of which one was made for the servants. That was the spot where the elevator was installed. The platform was 1.5 x 2.5 metres.
Left: In the hall on the first floor or the adiacent rooms the clients could choose from the unrestored cupboards.
Right: A 150 kilo oak cupboard was rolled on the lift platform. With the help of handy gadgets like trolleys I could do most things alone.
Cabinet maker de Vaal in his new workshop, being the former coach house.
Interior of the main hall with the small stage where Queen Juliana regularly gave performances and declamations for friends and court staff.
Old oak parquet floors and high ceilings, an appropriate environment for our antiques.
Above the central hall was a leaded glass cupola.
In 1987 we would choose this very spot to erect the giant water barometer.
Although we had a good looking shop in Hilversum before, the setting of the 18th century building was far more attractive. Lots of people called in who never had been in our former shop. The building also attracted people from the press.
The romantic entrance of our shop with the roses.
The Japanese flowering cherry gave a rich blossom every spring.
When our antique shop celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1976, we gave our clients a good bottle of Bordeaux wine, for which I had drawn a label with special permission from the vineyard in France.
One of the first opportunities to use the image of Rustenhoven for representation.
At the Queen’s birthday on 30 April 1976 the local brass band came to bring us a serenade, after the scouts had run up the flag according the protocol. Money was donated by the invitees for new uniforms for the brass band.
The whole brass band ‘Kunst en Genoegen’ with the drum major, the banner-bearer, the majorettes, the drum majorettes and the mini-majorettes in full regalia.
At such a moment, you can feel the music in your whole body. All these people came to play special for us. An unforgettable experience.
At Rustenhoven we always had something going on and we considered every change as an adventure. In the stables I had installed a 6 m3 caustic soda bath to clean the antique cupboards. They always had a coat of paint, which needed to be removed. A dirty job and not without risk, as the caustic soda is aggressive to the skin. It was a large investment too, but we got articles in antique magazines with this modern installation, which attracted lots of new clients. Eventually it took us nine months until we could deliver an antique cupboard after it had been ordered. Buying, transporting, selling, cleaning, showing the clients around, give instructions to the cabinet maker for a proper restoration and finally the delivery. It was all my job. Ethne and my mother received the clients in the shop and took care for the presentation. Antique furniture needs lots of wax and other care, which was a job for the ladies.
An antique oak cupboard comes out of the caustic soda bath.
When I turned 30, Ethne had given a dark room kit to me. Soon I had found a new hobby and when I had the chance to buy a real Hasselblad camera, I transformed an old bathroom into a professional darkroom and built my studio, which had an octagonal shape and was made from polystyrene sheets to reflect the flashlight. In that studio I did the photography for my barometer books, brochures, press releases etc.
The octagonal photo studio.
Ethne immersed herself in an other artistic field. Her ambition to be a professional piano player in her early twenties gradually gave way to the world of the visual arts, in which she soon found a preference for pencil, drawing pen and brush. Nature’s creations were the base of Ethne’s love of water colours, a choice she has pursued for more then thirty years now. However, her affection for the world of music remained. When she was clearing an attic in the mid eighties, she came upon a pile of old yellowed music papers showing the ravages of time. This inspired her to make music the subject of her water colours. Worn-out music scores and old musical instruments became the guidelines in her work. The most beautiful of Ethne’s music water colours were issued in Europe as posters and postcards. She had commissions from several people and once she made a water colour for Christine Deutekom, a well-known Dutch opera singer. Her work was presented to the lady on TV.
Ethne never stopped painting. She has her own website, on which you can see her water colours and the glass and crystal objects she engraved.
Ethne in our photo studio.
Left: Ethne’s paint room. Right: Ethne working on her water colour for the TV presentation.
In the early seventies I had chosen antique mercury barometers as a specialism. At Rustenhoven that specialism became more important and soon we had a large workshop. Initially I did a lot myself but soon people came to assist. We used the workshop for our shop collection, but also for people who came in with a broken barometer.
Restoring antique barometers became more important than oak furniture. After 1980 de barometers had taken over.
In 1978 I wrote my first book about barometers, which was translated in 1980 into English and German. For the first time we could use our small stage to celebrate the presentation of the book.
Festive moments with Unieboek publisher Rob Demarée and my first barometer book. I had also written a children’s book, which was presented by our mayor Mr Fons Panis.
Our mayor Mr Fons Panis opening the barometer exhibition in 1980
The first large sales exhibition with antique barometers in 1978.
The second sales exhibition in 1980 when the translations of the barometer book came out.
In 1982 and ’83 I invited four specialized antique dealers with porcelain, clocks, silver, jewellery etc. to have a ‘Salon des Antiquaires’ at Rustenhoven. It proved to be a massive attraction. People had to park their car outside the property and sometimes needed to walk half a kilometre!
Famous Dutch actor Willem Nijholt opened the second ‘Salon’ in 1983.
The old building was an ideal setting for this kind of top quality antiques.
The barometers could be inspected in the main hall.
Long walks for our guests. Traffic jams in Maartensdijk, which had never happened before.
In 1983 my second book on barometers came out. This book had taken 3 and a half years of preparation and was much more serious than the first one. We had invited our former prime-minister Piet de Jong to present the book and open the double exhibition, being one with museum pieces and another one as a sales exhibition. There were too many people for our main hall, so we needed TV screens in the adjacent rooms.
Presentation of ‘Barometers in Beeld’ in the hall of Rustenhoven by our former prime-minister Piet de Jong in 1983.
Piet de Jong having his excellent speech. Ethne and I surrounded by Dutch museum curators. My old class mate and flute player Thijs van Leer did the introduction.
These museum barometers all played a role in the book ‘Barometers in Beeld’.
We had too many barometers for the sales exhibition, so we also hung them to the walls of the first floor.
Antique barometers are costly and I realized that sooner or later the source would dry up and the prices would become too high for most people. To avoid a threatening disappointment, I decided to design a modern mercury barometer type, made on Perspex. In 1984 the first model was launched. The barometers were named ‘Weather Art’ and carried my signature. We set up a production line and sold them in our shop and to twenty selected home decoration shops in the Netherlands as well. Clients and press waxed lyrical about it, as this was a real novelty. Nobody had ever used Perspex for a mercury barometer before. My prototype even appeared on Dutch national TV.
The photo quality is bad, but what does it matter? My prototype had been on Dutch national TV.
Soon other models came out and eventually we had eight different models for sale. The walked out the door, as there were many more people who could spend a couple of hundred guilders rather than a couple of thousand or more. During the set-up process of the production line I invented a transport system, which I called ‘Safe Tilt’ and I applied for a patent.
Calibrating the Perspex ‘Weather Art’ barometers. After adjusting them, I numbered every instrument by hand.
In 1985 ideas came to house a barometer museum in Rustenhoven. More about that on the Next Chapter. From 1983 until 1987 we were members of the International Art and Antiques Fair in Breda, but we stopped after five years, as the museum would demand too much of our time and energy.
In 1995 the photo studio on the first floor was dismantled. The room was going to be used as a sales room for antique barometers. It became a room where clients would have their privacy.
The newly decorated sales room upstairs was admired by our friend Willemien.
We regularly had a barometer sales exhibition, like the one held in 1991 when the shop celebrated its 25th anniversary. Pièce de résistance was a multiple mercury barometer made by Paulus Wast from Amsterdam in 1766. By then it was the most expensive barometer in the world. We sold it to a Dutch client who lived abroad.
Barometer made by Paulus Wast from Amsterdam. The instrument was veneered with rosewood and had three different barometer systems plus a thermometer.
Left: a bronze Hercules figure with clock and barometer. Right: a brass barograph with clock.
At Rustenhoven our shop and the barometer museum lied together in perfect harmony. There was some suspicion from the established museum world, but that disappeared soon. It was a lucky shot that people could walk around amidst all these beautiful instruments, without feeling any pressure to buy something.
Constantly changing displays in the rooms.
Museum rooms or sales rooms, they all looked great with Ethne’s decorative creations.
Mother and daughter waiting for the shop and the museum to be open. Summer 1997.
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History - Purchase - Antique Shop - Barometer Museum - Garden - Snow Pics - Private - Sale - Present - Rustenhoven on Postcards - Rustenhoven in Adverts - Contact