Kam & Van Rhijn, and the Exportkist

Beens's 1922 advertisement shared its showroom line among three firms, and one of them was a furniture house with a good idea¹. Kam & Van Rhijn was born in Schiedam and settled in Rotterdam within a few years^2 3. It made and furnished under the steam-factory name Penelope, and its lasting invention was a crate. What follows traces where the firm came from and how it ended up beside the firm that built the corner.

Two men, a factory and the Penelope name

On the first of April 1899 two furniture manufacturers and merchants in Schiedam, Willem Hendrik Kam and Marius Adrianus van Rhijn, went into partnership to make furniture and for the trade around it⁴. They signed the deed on 24 April and registered it the next day, but dated its start back to the first of the month⁵.

The same year the Schiedam nuisance-permit register entered the two men at Boterstraat 74, cadastral parcel B 1382, for a furniture factory⁶. Later advertising would widen the address to Boterstraat 72–74⁷. By 11 June 1900 the firm was at work at Groote Markt 8 in Schiedam, advertising for a skilled upholsterer⁸.

On 15 November 1903 it took a large display advertisement as Stoom-Meubelfabriek PENELOPE, the Penelope steam furniture factory, at Delftschevaart 28 in Rotterdam⁹. It offered complete furnishing, free estimates and an illustrated catalogue¹⁰. It also named H. Visser of Schiedam as its agent for Goeree-Overflakkee and Voorne & Putten, carrying the offer beyond Rotterdam¹¹.

The showhouse and the modern room

In December 1909 the trade weekly Industrieel Weekblad praised Kam & Van Rhijn among the makers doing modern interior work, and singled out its showhouse at Schiedamschesingel 9 in Rotterdam¹². The rooms there were furnished with taste, some costly and some cheap, each kept strictly to one style¹³. Behind the showroom stood a factory equipped to current standards, ready to make complete interiors to any design¹⁴.

The page carried two captioned photographs of Modern Huiskamer-ameublement, modern sitting-room suites, with painted signboards reading Kam & v. Rhijn Rotterdam and Kam & Van Rhijn Woninginrichtingen Rotterdam¹⁵. They are the only pictures we hold of a room this firm furnished, but the rights to the trade weekly's images are not yet settled enough to reproduce them here¹⁶.

In May 1916 the Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad gave the firm's stand at the Nijverheidstentoonstelling, the industrial-arts exhibition, special notice¹⁷. It praised the Queen Anne, Chippendale, Adam, Sheraton and Tudor interiors and reported destinations and clients abroad without naming them¹⁸.

The partnership behind that stand had changed in the preceding years. On the first of January 1908 the original firm was dissolved and at once continued as Kam & van Rhijn, Woninginrichtingen¹⁹. It now had a third managing partner, Nicolaas Petrus de Koo, and unnamed limited partners²⁰. De Koo left again on the first of October 1911²¹, and Kam and van Rhijn carried on as the only managing partners under the same name²².

The crate that was a bed

By the middle of the war the firm's export trade reached beyond a single customer. In June 1917 Industrieel Weekblad ran a feature on the export of Dutch furniture that described its line²³. Its speciality was the Old-English styles, Jacobean, Queen Anne, Chippendale, Sheraton, Adam and Tudor, built from specially seasoned timbers²⁴. The trade had spread as far as Athens, where more than one house was said to hold a cosy Dutch interior²⁵.

That trade travelled in the Exportkist, which the article called the firm's own peculiar and eminently practical invention²⁶. The crate measured 1.85 by 0.85 by 0.80 metres²⁷. It did not merely carry the furniture: its own case became the base of the bed in a one-person sit-and-sleep room²⁸.

According to the article, inside went a whole bachelor's room: a wire-sprung mattress with its kapok bedding, a bedside cabinet, a chest of drawers and a washstand set²⁹. A table and chairs, a coat-rack with brass hooks, two engravings and a mirror were packed in beside them³⁰. In pitch-pine it cost f225 free on board at Rotterdam, in oak f275 and in mahogany f300³¹. A mosquito canopy for the tropics added f30³².

The article admired the packing most. Nothing loose went in, no string and no paper, and every piece had one assigned place, so that even the most helpless of bachelors could repack the crate within the half-hour³³. By day the room hid itself³⁴. With the bedding stowed and a cloth thrown over it, the bed became a divan, and the wash-set disappeared³⁵. The firm's managers had refused to cheapen the work for export, holding that first-class work finds its way in every country³⁶.

The article also printed photographs of a Dutch correspondent's house in Deli, in the East Indies, and two views of a room furnished from an Exportkist³⁷. He had sent Rotterdam the measurements of his walls, windows and doors³⁸. Back with the crate came a bundle of oak slats and a drawing showing how to fix them against a backing of Chinese matting, which he bought locally for a song³⁹. The two views in the magazine were his own Kodak snapshots of the finished room⁴⁰. He wrote home delighted: "En nu moest je mijn vrijgezellen-kamer eens zien! Tip-Top, hoor!", now come and see my bachelor's room⁴¹. In November 1916 a customer in Stockholm had written asking for one too, calling the crate ideal for mannelijke en vrouwelijke jonggezellen, single men and women, who move house often⁴².

Into Beens

The partnership's dissolution and the move into Beens's showroom were two separate events, two years apart. From the first of January 1918 Kam and van Rhijn parted, and van Rhijn alone kept the right to carry on the business under the firm name⁴³.

By that summer the firm was already moving in step with Beens. In late August 1918 Kam & Van Rhijn shut its factory for a four-day holiday, and its behangers en meubelmakers, its upholsterers and cabinetmakers, were to do no work away from the premises either⁴⁴. The notice stood on the same newspaper page as an identical one from Beens, three months before the two firms would share a death notice⁴⁵.

Before the year was out, van Rhijn was dead. Marius Adrianus van Rhijn died on 30 November 1918, aged forty-four, after a short illness^46 47. His family mourned him as a son, brother, brother-in-law and uncle, and his own cabinetmaking and upholstery staff placed a notice of their own^48 49. W. H. Kam, the partner who had left the firm eleven months before, mourned "mijn vroegeren Compagnon en Vriend", my former partner and friend^50 51. The joint death notice that ties his name to the firm was placed by two houses together, Kam & Van Rhijn and N.V. Beens' Woninginrichting-Maatschappij⁵². Beside it H. P. Beens called him a colleague and friend, and said their working together had been short⁵³.

The move to Beens's address followed the next year. A joint advertisement by Kam & Van Rhijn and Beens announced that the Schiedamsche Singel 9 shop would close on the first of January 1920 and move to Beens's Coolsingel 56 rooms, where the business would go on op denzelfden voet, on the same footing^54 55. Less than two years before, Beens had shown paintings in an upstairs exhibition room at that same address^56 57.

By September 1922 the firm had moved on again^58 59. Its name was one of three on Beens's showroom line at Coolsingel 49, a later and different Coolsingel address, alongside the Beens company and Van Duffelen & Pelt^60 61.

The records show an announced move and then a shared shop⁶². No formal instrument joining the two firms in law is recorded⁶³.