Kokke House, a family affair
His thought-provoking chairs and stools made Ruud-Jan Kokke one of the Netherlands’ leading postmodern designers of the late 20th century. Now his daughter is spearheading a family venture to make his furniture more widely available, trawling through his extensive archives for ideas to bring into production.
“‘Whether it’s beautiful or ugly is beside the point. Most of all, it shouldn’t go unnoticed. A chair that makes you think, “Can I really sit on this?””
After meandering through a Dutch landscape of verdant meadows, Konfekt arrives at a tulip-red building decorated with folkloric carvings. We follow a narrow pebbled road that opens to a lush garden, a large pond, and a narrow river on the left, where a revamped canal boat floats. It is home to Romy Kokke and her family of four. In the middle of the lawn stands a modern atelier where she is brewing coffee in the company of her father, mentor, and creative confidant, Ruud-Jan Kokke, who drops by several times a week. “This is our playground,” says Romy as she pours a strong espresso and glances outside through the glass façade overlooking the water. “It’s both a workshop, where we test prototypes to see how they interact with the space, and a place for the laissez-faire. We love to take our teakwood sloop out on the water when the weather allows. Of course, the kids jump in for a quick refresher on hot days.”
Vinkeveen, a village in this lush corner of the Netherlands, might be an escape, but it’s also home to the creative rebirth of a family brand: Kokke House, recently established to celebrate the work of Ruud-Jan Kokke. Born in 1956, Kokke made a name as one of the most definitive postmodernist figures in late 20th-century Dutch design. His TC museum stool is considered a classic, and his Kokkestok walking stick is featured in New York’s Moma. He is renowned for his lyrical gates to the Olympiaplein sports park in Amsterdam and his contribution to the award-winning Little C urban building project in Rotterdam.
The atelier in which we’ve now gathered, around a kitchen island, is also Ruud-Jan’s work, planned alongside Romy. “I designed the wave-shaped door with the hollow directing inwards to invite guests in,” says Ruud-Jan while gesturing to the expansive space, which houses prototypes as well as archive pieces. “Designing, for me, is rethinking something. I always pose myself the question: why?”
He sits down at the dinner table where the joint venture with his daughter started just a few years ago, when she unearthed a large storage box filled to the brim with her father’s sketches from the 1980s and 1990s. “Whether it’s beautiful or ugly is beside the point,” he says of his approach to his work. “Most of all, it shouldn’t go unnoticed. A chair that makes you think, ‘Can I really sit on this?’ Creating a moment of wondering, which then informs a moment of consciousness. Other than that, it should make sense.”
Ruud-Jan’s work was celebrated in his day and continues to be iconic but the designer never felt the urge to industrialize his designs. “It’s not that my father’s work wasn’t popular,” says Romy. “He just had no desire to market it himself.”
The new venture is a family affair: Ruud-Jan’s designs will be produced, marketed, and distributed by Romy, her partner, Daniel Beasley, and Ruud-Jan himself. “It’s very special,” adds Romy. “Even my sister, a film director, offers her very own perspective when she documents the furniture pieces on camera: how do people move around them, how do they live with them. That approach is essential to our design philosophy.”
So far, the brand has been a success. Two of Kokke House’s limited made-to-order chairs were purchased, one for the Louis Vuitton store in London and one for the Yves Saint Laurent store in Saint Tropez. “In 1984, I was one of the first contemporary designers who made furniture from untainted wood,” says Ruud-Jan. “Furniture suppliers didn’t get that at all, but I always stayed true to my vision. When I was studying, I also refused to follow art history, because I didn’t want it to influence me too much. Luckily, they let me. Of course, you’re always influenced by your childhood, by the zeitgeist. But when I design, I try to sort of tune out and think for myself without any distractions.”
Romy settles into a nearby F_21 – one of the first armchairs that Ruud-Jan designed. Crafted from ash and oak, it is a square frame with a seat of carefully placed, thin wooden slats. “It looks like a sculpture,” she says. “In a way, it is, since it’s also included in the permanent collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. But, first and foremost, it’s meant to be practical, to seat someone. It was made for a doctor who was a friend of my father. A lot of people are scared to perch on it, but when they do, they find it’s very comfortable.”
Ruud-Jan (now 67) lives nearby with his wife, artist Petra Hartman, and still works on wide-ranging projects in urban development and design. “He gives us feedback around the dinner table, but we’re the ones who run Kokke House based on his original ideas,” says Romy, as she explains how she and her father also take on residential projects. She pulls out her laptop to show renders of a home in Ameland (a West Frisian Island off the Netherlands’ north coast). Their Kokke signature is clearly visible in the bespoke design: innovatively curved walls, functional Corten steel, a floating bed – all all harmoniously tied together. “My dad signs off on the bigger picture; I look after the interior design down to the smallest detail, also adding in my mother’s artworks,” says Romy. “Her style is almost the opposite of his: quirky, experimental, emotional, at times political. Maybe because of that contradiction, they challenge and elevate each other. The common thread: they’re both autonomous and have never been led by current trends. In a way, my parents’ tastes collide in me; I like to be a bit more extravagant when it comes to my sense of dressing or styling, but I also love and have learned so much from my father’s approach to design.”
Growing up on a houseboat on a natural lake in Oosterbeek, surrounded by Kokke furniture, Romy knows her father’s work intimately. While many children carve out their own path, for Romy, it was clear that one day she would pick up where her father left off. “I recently found a poem that I wrote as a teen,” she says. “It said something along the lines of, ‘One day we’ll conquer the world with this furniture series!’ What can I say? It’s in my veins.”
After graduating in fashion design from ArtEZ University in Arnhem, she first tried her hand at fashion in Amsterdam and Stockholm but found that she didn’t really like the fast-paced nature of the industry. Beasley, Romy’s partner of 22 years, also grew up on a houseboat in Oosterbeek, and both share a deep love of water. “Floating weightlessly on the water’s surface, staring at the skies above, my mind completely clears,” says Romy. “It gives me a total sense of freedom.” Clouds have packed the sky all morning, but when they finally part and the sun pours through, Romy suggests we venture out on the lake in their boat. Beasley joins us, steering across the gently undulating river. “Water has been a constant presence in our lives, and now we are raising our children by the water too,” he says. “The ever-changing patterns have recently inspired us to develop a design language that we plan to apply to a new, still-secret project. A tabletop—that’s all I can reveal for now.”
Kokke House is very much informed by Ruud-Jan’s archives: hundreds of sheets, pictures, notes, letters from admirers, and newspaper snippets, all meticulously kept in a silver-colored suitcase. “It’s a treasure trove,” says Romy with a smile.
Forthcoming projects on the horizon include the relaunch of the Pootjes! chair, known for its unique, playful legs (pootjes in Dutch) that give it a distinctive character. There’s also a series of wooden, cylinder-shaped lamps as well as hand-blown glass lamps, the latter in lapis lazuli blue—a striking shade and a departure from the neutrals that Kokke House is known for. “To us, lapis lazuli is sort of a neutral,” says Romy. “My mother always starts with blue paint when she sets up her canvas.”
It’s a fitting hue for a family so drawn to diving into the elements and dwelling on them too. “Unlike the rest of the family, I’m not so fond of swimming,” says Ruud-Jan. “But my wife and I have always lived near bodies of water. Every morning, we walk along streams that flow down from the Veluwezoom national park and merge into the Rhine. That ever-flowing water along the sand and the rippling sound has something primal about it; it connects me to myself and to life’s natural rhythm.
