Style combination · Pairs well
Nieuwe Kunst × Vienna Secession
Both pulled Art Nouveau toward geometry, symmetry and strict repetition in the same years; add Vienna's black, white and gold and its white margins to the Dutch earth-colour repeat for a more open page.
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau) Vienna Secession
- Type from Vienna Secession
- Colour from Nieuwe Kunst
- Form from Vienna Secession
- Composition from Nieuwe Kunst
- Surface from Nieuwe Kunst
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Vienna Secession
Dawn
Federant; Vienna Secession used Alfred Roller's elongated, interlocking block capitals and Koloman Moser's geometric display lettering
Text · Nieuwe Kunst
The Dutch branch of Art Nouveau, seen mostly in book covers, vignettes and posters. Where Brussels and Paris let the line whip and swell, Dutch designers, from 1895 more and more on grids of triangles, built stylised plants and animals into flat, symmetrical repeats. They took Arts and Crafts ideals from England, and from the Dutch East Indies colony they took batik, which they used for covers in cotton, velvet and parchment. Jan Toorop's poster for Delftsche Slaolie (1894) gave the style its mocking nickname, the 'salad-oil style'.
EB Garamond; Nieuwe Kunst used Hand-drawn titles lettered into the decoration of covers and posters, such as Theo Nieuwenhuis's lettering, recognisable enough that Leiden University Libraries attribute a 1908 parchment binding to him on the strength of its typography and Klaas van Leeuwen, Letterboek voor den teekenaar en ambachtsman (1907), a lettering model book, geometric in concept, from the theosophical circle of De Bazel and Lauweriks
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Nieuwe Kunst, with a counter-accent from Vienna Secession. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau) Vienna Secession
-
#ede2c6ground · 36% -
#23365aink · 14% -
#c49a3aaccent · 18% -
#6e4426accent · 14% -
#a3282aaccent · 10% -
#6b7340accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ede2c6;
--ink: #23365a;
--accent-1: #c49a3a;
--accent-2: #6e4426;
--accent-3: #a3282a;
--accent-4: #6b7340;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}Use it with care
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau): Nieuwe Kunst took batik and the look of wayang shadow puppets from Java under Dutch colonial rule, largely without naming Javanese makers; when you borrow its batik surfaces or puppet-like figures, credit batik as an Indonesian craft (UNESCO-listed since 2009) whose motifs can carry meaning, and do not present printed batik-look as wax-resist work.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Nieuwe Kunst
- Batik Pattern Tradition Pairs well · Its direct source: Dutch designers used wax-resist dyeing for covers in cotton, velvet and parchment; pair a constructed Nieuwe Kunst repeat with real batik colour layering, and credit the Javanese craft.
- Total Design & Dutch Functionalism Contrasts · Dutch design's later ornament-free grid against its own ornamental past: a filled, symmetrical batik cover beside a Crouwel layout in sans-serif on white makes the choice between pattern and pure information explicit.
- Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography Pairs well · Its Amsterdam successor kept the symmetry, the closed frame and the systematic construction (Lauweriks drew Wendingen's first cover) but traded plants and batik for heavy capitals built from brass rules; combine them for a vegetal pattern inside a monumental frame.
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · The same years and the same plants, but Mucha's whiplash and swelling figures move while the Dutch line is constructed on triangles and repeated flat; set one against the other to choose between a line that flows and a line that is built.
- Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging) Contrasts · Toorop's long-limbed figures, whose silhouettes evoke Javanese shadow puppets, borrowed the outline under Dutch colonial rule without its code; compare them with a puppet whose every feature names a character.
With Vienna Secession
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Set French whiplash against the Viennese square to show the turn from organic to geometric ornament within one decorative idiom.
- Art Deco Pairs well · Carry the Secession's squares, chequers and gold into Deco's stepped geometry for a luxurious but disciplined look.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Both reduce motifs to emblematic flat shapes in a calm field; combine them for elegant cultural posters.
- Glasgow Style Pairs well · Vienna learned from Glasgow in 1900; combine Mackintosh's attenuated verticals with Secession squares and gold for refined cultural branding.
- Josef Frank and Svenskt Tenn Botanical Prints Contrasts · Frank came out of Vienna, but his loose, asymmetric plant repeats are the opposite of the Secession's geometric, symmetrical ornament; compare a Wiener Werkstätte grid pattern with his free-growing trees.
- Mir iskusstva Book Art Contrasts · Both enclose pictures in symmetrical frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while the Russian book filled a wide border with folk and rococo motifs; pick geometric order or narrative ornament.
- Bezalel School Contrasts · Both put pictures inside symmetrical ornamental frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while Bezalel filled it with Middle Eastern filigree, carpet and metalwork motifs.
- Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography Contrasts · Both square their capitals into dense blocks inside symmetrical frames, but Vienna draws them by hand while Wendingen builds them from type metal; use the comparison to decide whether a heading should look drawn or assembled.