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Selling the taste A journey around the world The finest quality antiques and objects, exquisite attention to detail, lavish materials and an eclectic style, carefully personalised for each client: that's what people say about designers Thong Lei and Anne Noordam. This sale is essentially selling their taste, offering prize specimens from their collection, such as an early 19th century Italian parcel-gilt and ebonised walnut bureau with a Palladian architectural superstructure, as well as their own designs. On top of that, this sale is all about adventure. The adventure of living up to one's dreams, in private as well as in professional life. The adventure of discovering a truly unique style. The adventure of a lifetime. Based in Gouda, famous for its cheese and stroopwafels, Thong and Anne started their business in their living room in 1988. Anne was working 14 hours a day as a high-flyer in the cosmetics industry. While being very successful, she realised this level of commitment was only worthwhile with your own business. Thong: 'I was very much into collecting architectural drawings at the time. We both noticed that few, if any, frame-makers were able to make a frame that was truly outstanding, and matching with the print on top of that'. Thus, Anne gave up her secure position and started making picture frames. Over the years, as her craftmanship was improving, her ambitions grew. Anne says: 'The interior decorators who were selling my frames just doubled my prices; as a result, the frames were too expensive and poorly advertised as well. If I wanted to make this venture a succes, I needed some sound business advice'. That is when Thong resigned from the New York based advertising agency in 1992. Thong: 'While we never planned to go into business together, it only seemed natural to help Anne out at the time. Especially since I could truly appreciate what she was doing.' Of course, by then Decoration Empire had burst out of the living room. Trying to keep up with business, Anne found some space for rent in an old machine hall. Still in 1992, they established their reputation with their luxury picture frames at that year's TEFAF art fair in Maastricht. After that succesful debut, things took an unexpected turn. A friend asked for their help in decorating the house he was about to build. This project needed a concept, not just frames. Thong and Anne decided to accept the challenge and designed the complete interior. With a mix of different styles they achieved a truly personal touch for their first client and found themselves interior decorators at the same time. Soon their ever growing enterprise needed yet another home, which was found with three monumental buildings in the medieval centre of Gouda. Continuing successes, however, forced them to look for a solution on a larger scale. So Thong and Anne designed a building themselves, tailored for their ambitions and fitted to their needs. This lead to a state-of-the-art building of 4500 square meters that they find themselves in today, surrounded by the finest examples of 18th, 19th and 20th century interior design. The contemporary shell contains eight rooms, furnished with antiques, wooden floors from France, modern art and a multitude of exclusively designed fabrics. In the library, for instance, one gets the impression that Phileas Fogg, Jules Vernes famous world traveller, has just left for lunch at the Reform Club, while his servant Passepartout, having tidied up, went for a quick afternoon nap. Imagine yourself seated in one of the worn and comfortable chesterfield seats, surrounded by leather bound books on wall to wall shelves, soft lit by lamps on bronze feet. While thick embroidered curtains keep daylight and street rumour out, on a cherrywood sidetable the sword of an Atlantic swordfish reminds one of past travels, while a globe points to future journeys. Back to modern times. While Thong and Anne do travel the world, and obviously know - and honour - the classics and their times, there's more. Thong and Anne are designers of their own time. Anne created the elegant but sturdy 'sidetable number one', resting on an omega shaped foot. Thong's eye for clean design is seen in a modern day incarnation of the library clubseats, as well as in the bookcases in the same room. This, however, is still a fraction of what Decoration Empire is capable of. The one woman business that became a passion for two, grew into a 28 people company. Looking for maximum control over production quality, Thong and Anne decided to bring together as much knowledge as possible. Their in house expertise ranges from designers, furniture makers, restorers, painters and metal polishers to even architects. No wonder that most of the furniture the couple designs is executed by their own workshop, by hand and in very limited series. Sidetable number one, for instance, still has to see its tenth brother. Disregarding the flight their business has made, Anne still revers the quiet hours in a silent room with a multitude of frames and just one painting, searching for the perfect match. At 40-something - like their designs, she defies aging - Anne still posseses the drive for perfection that convinced Thong to leave The Big Apple for Gouda. Asked for their business philosophy, they look at each other and soon the room is filled with laughter. Anne says: ' It has to do with a certain joie the vivre. Taste is all about the willingness to look for and appreciate beauty and style. It is one of the first things we look for in potential customers also. A favorite hotel, shoes, manner of speech and behaviour, a certain twinkle in the eye can reveal a lot about a person, and therefore about the sort of house he or she will appreciate. We love our job, and were asking no less than the same love from each client. Actually, every project we do is a lot like a relationship; it tends to take a few years, in which we will collaborate intensively with the client.' Before starting, Thong and Anne each have a right to veto a project; both of them have to believe in it. Thong: 'My personal philosophy: Life is a party, but you have to light the birthday candles yourself. It's not so different from Anne's joie de vivre; we look, in our business and customers alike, for those people who are not afraid reaching for the stars and, very important, are willing to work hard at it. Only when this taste for adventure is felt - often with the first handshake - we can leap into the unknown. We take pride in not applying a certain 'housestyle' to every project we do. We imagine the best solution we can for each client personally, and when we're finished the project shouldn't - and rarely is indeed - recognisable as a 'Decoration Empire Design', but as a house well loved and taken care of. Without wanting to boast, I think the only thing that can give our work away, is the high level of finishing and internationale style.' And surely the fact that Anne and Thong started their business having half a working life behind them, brought something special to Decoration Empire. On one hand, leaving their succesful careers provided them with more than enough drive to do even better on their own. On the other hand, they both brought to their business the knowledge gained in 20 years of working and travelling. And indeed, the keyword is experience. When a client desires an Americana flavour to his home, Thong knows what a Long Island Victorian manor looks like, as he knows that even the toiletbowls in the States are bigger than on the continent. When a fin de siècle chair needs restoration, Anne has seen literally thousands of them. On top of that, the couple's love for Paris lead to a profound knowledge of what is to be found along the banks of the Seine. They know the craftsmen who continue to produce passementerie - cords, tassels or ribbons to finish of upholstery - with wooden machinery from 1880, programmed by punched cards. While the couple visit France at least 20 times a year, essentially the world is their playground. Their Cultural Diversity is maybe best diplayed in a room with a Louis XV commode, whereupon a African mask and a ancient Greek sculpture, overlooked by a Bram Bogart painting, stand side by side. With the kitchen next door - when selling a taste, one can't do without a kitchen - the couple again proves not only having a love for the relics of days bygone. Just as Phileas Fogg conquered the world using elephants and the fascinating novelty of trains and boats driven by steam engine alike, Thong only used high tech stainless steel elements to create an almost industrial kitchen which will have any cook longing. Far from looking at it as mere selling tool, Thong and Anne really have cultural diversity at heart. Therefore, each year they take the group of company designers for a trip. Past years saw visits to the Louvre in Paris of course, but also to l'Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Sans Souci in Potsdam, the Saint Peter cathedral in Rome and the MOMA in New York. Thong: To know the world, we must show the world. With this sale, Anne and Thong once more embark on a new adventure. In doing so, they welcome a new audience and make a slight change of course at the same time. After the audience had a chance of harvesting the fruit of years of passionate collecting all over the world, the couple will head for a future with a stronger emphasis on architectural design. Just like Jules Verne wrote in 1873, starting with a passepartout, one can discover an unknown and exciting future: After a game of whist, Mr. Fogg repaired to his bedroom, and called out, "Passepartout!" Passepartout made his appearance. "We start for Dover and Calais in ten minutes." A puzzled grin overspread Passepartout's round face; "Monsieur is going to leave home?" "Yes," returned Phileas Fogg. "We are going round the world." Just like Thong and Anne did, in 1988 and now.

A stained beechwood bergere

OF LOUIS XVI STYLE, RECENTLY MANUFACTURED

Details

A stained beechwood bergere
OF LOUIS XVI STYLE, RECENTLY MANUFACTURED
The padded back, arms, sides and squab cushion upholstered in black 'centre street' leather by Ralph Lauren

Special notice

" + " : 19.0% VAT applies to both the hammer price and the buyer's premium and is calculated for each lot as 42.8% of the hammer price up to a value of €150,000 plus 33.28% of any amount in excess of €150,000.

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