Smooth as Velvet: Horta Museum

Smooth as Velvet is a 9-month long exhibition series in which the Horta Museum in Brussels has invited five designers to decorate the walls of this iconic museum, the former family home and workshop of architect Victor Horta. The exhibition features work by young and emerging talent as well as established figures and includes: Louisa Carmona, Flore & Pauline Fockedey, Elise Peroi and Marc Van Hoe. Curated by Benjamin Zurstrassen, Smooth as Velvet offers a unique opportunity for these designers to engage in a dialogue with Horta’s work and experiment with traditional techniques and savoir-faire. The Horta Museum first invited a contemporary designers to create an installation in dialogue with Horta’s work in 2017, with Nacho Carbonell and in 2018 with Marcin Rusak.  Smooth as Velvet will be the first time, however that the installations form part of the historic house and not the newer building.

As Zurstrassen notes, “we chose velvet in part because it is a traditional form of weaving and we have many interesting examples, in the collection, of Horta using velvet in his designs. We thought it would be a good exercise for the designers to engage with this traditional form of weaving.” The weaving was done nearby Weaving Mill Van Neder, based in Kortrijk, together with Florence and Martine Moulis, who create sabre-cut velvets and are based in Arles, and have been selected to give form and life to the creations devised by the guest artists.

Zurstrassen states, “My role as curator was limited. My goal was to give as much freedom to the artist as possible. They can choose the rooms and how they approach the project.” The designers were selected by an artistic committee that includes includes Zurstrassen and leading design professionals including Marie Pok, Francis Carpentier, Caroline Mierop and Pascale Mussard. Flore & Pauline Fockedy, sisters who often collaborate on scenographic and artistic projects, have selected the breakfast room for their installation; Elise Peroi is a textile designer known for her all-encompassing installations that are often inspired by nature and movement. Here she creates an installation in the boudoir made of silver, wood, painted and sabre-cut Duchesse satin and sabre-cut velvet; Marc van Hoe has been working with textiles and velvet for over 60-years and was awarded the 2010 Henri Van de Velde award in recognition of his outstanding career. He installed jacquard woven curtains, tablecloths and panels in the family room. Louisa Carmona is the youngest designer of the group and has installed a work in the kitchen. A recent graduate of ECAL and La Cambre, Carmona’s work focuses on fabric and on different ways of fashioning it, on our interactions with the objects, and on their influence on inhabited space.

Smooth as Velvet not only offers the chance for these designers to show their work in the Horta Museum, an unusual context but one with much history and importance, but also sets up a new relationship between design, craftsmanship and tradition, linking past and present and creating new connections among them.

Smooth as Velvet is on view at the Horta Museum through June 30, 2025.

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