The carved-oak book-cabinet, and where it went
On 18 September 1895 a newspaper described in detail a piece of furniture the firm is recorded to have made, on the very day it was handed over. It was a carved-oak book-cabinet set, a gift to the Rotterdam physician for his doctoral jubilee. Nobody has found it in a Dutch museum collection. Its making takes a few lines to tell; where it went afterwards is the longer and stranger half.
What it was
The set came out of the firm's Haagscheveer workshop, and the same day's report called it a meesterstuk van meubelfabricatie, a masterpiece of furniture-making. From that morning on, this deep dive follows the object.
> City news. > > Today Dr. S. J. Halbertsma commemorates the day on which he took his doctorate twenty-five years ago. Numerous marks of interest from various quarters fell to the jubilarian's lot. A committee from among his patients presented him this morning at 9 o'clock with a splendid gift, together with an album containing the names of the donors. > > The gift is a carved oak set, sculpted and assembled in the workshop of Messrs. Van Duffelen and Pelt, Haagscheveer 34 in this city — a masterpiece of furniture-making that does great honour to its makers. > > There is, first of all, a large book-cabinet, an upper piece that is the actual cabinet and a lower piece that is a table with deep drawers for plate-work [prints/illustrated volumes]. This piece and the two others — a smaller book-cabinet and a chimney-piece facing — are of the finest oak and beautifully ornamented. Thus, carved in the large book-cabinet are the heads of the professors Donders, Niemeger, and Hidde Halbertsma; figures and human statuettes are cut in relief which together give fitting symbolic representations; elsewhere character-heads are sculpted. Mr. Miedema supplied the models for the various figures, and Mr. Fabri very ably painted the central panel of the chimney-piece as an imitation gobelin [tapestry]. Mr. A. Spoon furnished the design for the whole. These Rotterdammers together — Messrs. Van Duffelen and Pelt above all — have made a most splendid gift for the esteemed Rotterdam physician. > > On behalf of the committee, which had betaken itself to the jubilarian's home, he was addressed by Mr. Koch, who paid him tribute as a skilled and experienced physician and as a man, and expressed the wish that he might long be preserved for his patients and friends. How great the esteem is that his colleagues, too, bear the skilled and obliging man was proved by the gift — a magnificent pendulum clock [mantel clock] with matching candelabra in cuivre poli [polished bronze/copper] — which was presented to him an hour later by Dr. Klinkert, with a fitting word, on behalf of 32 doctors of medicine. > > Besides the two above-named gifts, the jubilarian received from all sides countless marks of friendship and esteem, while throughout the whole afternoon numerous visitors came to the salons — transformed into a flower garden — to offer their congratulations to the celebrating family.
There were several pieces. The report describes a large book-cabinet in two parts: the cabinet proper above, and below it a table with deep drawers for plaatwerken (prints or illustrated volumes). Beside it stood a smaller bookcase and a chimney-piece facing. Heads of the professors Donders, Niemeger (as printed) and Hidde Halbertsma were chiselled into the oak of the large cabinet. The report does not say how, or whether, the last of them was related to the doctor. Figures and human statuettes were carved in relief, with symbolic scenes and character heads elsewhere.
Three makers are named, each a known Rotterdam figure of the decorative arts. Arij Spoon, who taught ornament at the Rotterdam Academy, drew the design. The sculptor Simon Miedema modelled the carved figures, and Willem Adrianus Fabri painted the imitation-gobelin panel on the chimney-piece. A portrait of Miedema survives.
He supplied the models for the cabinet's carved figures.
Down the family
From 1895 the trail runs through the doctor's household, and each link can be followed and weighed for how firm it is. The making is documented, and so is the gift to Dr Halbertsma. After that the ground softens. The cabinet most likely passed to his daughter Esther Halbertsma, with whom the one documented institutional trail begins. That step rests on a museum's own research essay, not an accession slip: it is likely, but unproven.
Esther married into a family that mattered to Rotterdam's collections. Her husband, Johannes Baptista Crol, was a grandson of Abraham van Stolk, founder of the Atlas van Stolk, through his mother Sara van Stolk.
The 1940 donation, and the wall
According to the museum's own later research, she probably gave meerdere werken (several works) to Museum Boijmans in 1940.
We do not know whether she gave any furniture at all.
The search's plainest finding points the other way. No physical piece attributable to the firm has been catalogued in a Dutch museum collection.
The detailed description here comes from the newspaper account of its presentation.