Scottsdale, Arizona · An appreciation by Rob Urban
Cornelis HollanderSomething
of you.
Something new.
A family name, a designer’s imagination, and the lovely possibility that an object you treasure can keep changing with your life.
What a son remembers
Ten years.
A shared eye.
A good teacher.
When Walter Hollander spoke about learning jewelry design from his father, he remembered the pleasure of being taught.
In a 2018 interview with Highline Autos, he described ten years working beside Cornelis. They had a similar feeling for design. His father’s affectionate, easygoing manner made learning enjoyable. The article also described Walter revisiting designs from early company catalogs and giving them a contemporary treatment.
I find that combination moving. He had the old work to study, and the memory of a person who had made studying it a happy part of his life.
There is a great deal a good teacher can leave in someone’s hands: an eye for proportion, a way of approaching a difficult shape, the confidence to try again. The atmosphere in which those things are learned can stay with the student, too.
A family business gives that atmosphere somewhere to continue. Each new piece becomes an opportunity to use what was generously passed along.
The name on the door
A life with
an appetite
for design.
The company’s history begins in the Netherlands. Cornelis studied at the Vrije Academie in The Hague, worked in London and Johannesburg, and established the Scottsdale business in 1984. He died in 2017; Walter carries the work forward.
The history also remembers fast cars and motorcycles. I am glad it does. A person can become strangely solemn once a company begins describing his legacy. Those details let a little movement and enjoyment back into the portrait.
They make me curious about the person who saw a curve, a surface or a flash of color and wanted to do something with it. I cannot reconstruct the inspirations behind individual pieces from a biography. I can appreciate a business that remembers its founder as someone who enjoyed the world around him.
That seems a fitting memory to keep in a place devoted to making things people will enjoy wearing.
The distance from a drawer to a hand
Love can have
a present tense.
A customer testimonial published on the studio’s showroom page gives the value of a redesign a wonderfully clear scale. Jackie W. describes a diamond ring that spent more than five years in a drawer. It was beautiful, but it did not feel like her. After Cornelis reset the stones, she could wear them.
It is one customer’s account, selected by the business for its website. What draws me to it is the change in the object’s place in her life.
A treasured piece can ask quite a lot of its owner. Someone may love its history and still find its shape awkward, its style unfamiliar or its proportions difficult to wear. Those feelings can coexist. Affection does not give everyone the same hands, the same wardrobe or the same taste.
There is kindness in giving a person room to admit that. The history matters. So does the person who has the jewelry now.
I admire the possibility of a redesign that lets those two facts live together. A stone can remain a connection to an earlier chapter while the setting helps it become part of an ordinary day. The owner gets to decide what continuity looks like.
Before the finished piece
You can recognize
what you love
before you can draw it.
A preference is a useful beginning.
One reassuring detail in Cornelis Hollander’s description of its custom process is that changing direction early on is welcome. Consultation and sketches lead to digital renderings, then a printed scale model before casting.
That sequence gives a developing preference something to respond to. A person can look at a shape and realize that they want it softer, narrower or more open. Seeing the idea helps them understand their own taste.
I think this is an underappreciated part of creative work. The person commissioning something may know what the occasion means long before they know what the object should look like. A designer can help those two kinds of understanding meet.
And sometimes the first version is valuable because it reveals what the person actually wants. Being allowed to respond honestly can make the collaboration more interesting for everyone.
There is real pleasure in that gradual recognition: seeing a possibility become more familiar, until it feels like something you would choose even if no one else had an opinion.
Room for a
strong preference.
The studio describes its collections as architectural and contemporary. Its catalog includes original designs alongside the invitation to commission a custom piece.
I like the confidence in offering a recognizable point of view. People are allowed to have an immediate response to design. Sometimes a shape catches their attention before they have words for why.
A distinctive piece can give someone permission to be more definite about what they enjoy. They may discover that they like a stronger line than they expected, or that an unusual proportion feels completely natural on them. Choosing something personal can be a small exercise in trusting that response.
For a gift, there is another kind of attention involved: looking closely enough at someone else to choose for their taste. The delight is in recognition. A good choice says that you have noticed the person who will wear it.
That is one reason I find jewelry interesting as design. Its audience is very close. A ring stays within the wearer’s own field of view, becoming part of the small gestures of a day. It has many opportunities to make its owner glad.
Why I admire this company
The work goes
home with someone.
I keep coming back to Walter’s memory of learning beside his father. It gives the family name a human scale. There were years of working together, and there was enjoyment in the work.
Now that name belongs to objects that enter other people’s lives. A ring may be chosen for a celebration, remade for a different stage of life or simply worn because its owner loves looking at it. Each reason deserves careful attention.
What I admire about Cornelis Hollander is the meeting of a confident design tradition and the personal nature of the assignment. The studio brings an established way of seeing. The customer brings a life the designer is getting to know.
Somewhere in that exchange, a new piece begins to belong to someone. I think that is a lovely use of imagination.
Rob Urban
Useful details
Before a visit
or a conversation.
Where is Cornelis Hollander located?
The showroom is at 4151 N. Marshall Way in Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona. Check the official showroom page for current hours and access information before visiting.
Who continues Cornelis Hollander’s work?
The company identifies Walter C. Hollander, Cornelis’s son, as continuing the jewelry business after his father’s death in 2017.
Can the studio redesign heirloom jewelry?
Yes. Heirloom redesign is among the services the studio describes. Discuss the actual piece, your wishes and what can be preserved directly with the team.
Do I need a finished design before a consultation?
No. The studio describes a collaborative process beginning with ideas and preferences, followed by sketches, digital renderings and a scale model before casting.