Bloemenwerf House: front view

Van de Velde married in 1894; next year, he built a family home, Bloemenwerf (1895), near Brussels, for which he designed the architecture and house contents in a coherent, organic whole, down to his wife's dresses and jewellery.

The house is distinguished by its provocatively simple forms, wholly in the manner of William Morris's Red House (1859), which Morris and Philip Webb had constructed in face of all conventions.