Art Nouveau tripod pedestal table

The Charles Vreeken Fund, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation, has recently acquired an Art Nouveau tripod pedestal table in bronze and fossilised wood. The Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta designed the table for the conservatory of his own house (now the Horta museum).

Victor Horta (1861-1947) was one of the founders of the Art Nouveau movement. Together with Paul Hankar and Henry van de Velde, he initiated this new style of architecture, in which all of the interior elements of a building were in perfect harmony with the exterior architectural design.

It was in this spirit that Horta designed the table in 1906 for the conservatory of his home in the Rue Américaine in Ixelles (Brussels). For the table top, he chose to use a block of fossilized wood that he himself had purchased in Munich in 1905. The wood evokes the function of a conservatory, which makes a link between house and garden.

This little table can be seen in a photo from the Horta Museum archive, with a stuffed pheasant exhibited on it. Thanks to the King Baudouin Foundation, the pedestal table has been entrusted to the Art & History Museum, which displays it at the Horta Museum in Ixelles. This way, the table has now returned to the home for which it was originally created.  

The Charles Vreeken Fund has as its objective to enrich the collections of Belgian museums with masterpieces of our national heritage.