W
hat is greatness? For Eleanor
Roosevelt, it was the discussion
of ideas rather than people
or events that led to greatness
of mind. It’s a wonderful
sentiment, and a reminder that we can always
cultivate our minds by exploring, and remaining
open to ideas. I recently spent an hour with Axel
Vervoordt at Kanaal, the epicentre of his art and
design empire outside of Antwerp, Belgium, and
knew with every fibre of my being that I was in
the presence of someone truly great. It wasn’t just
that as a novice creative, I was finally meeting the
grand master of the ‘mix’ — Vervoordt has been
bringing together disparate ages and styles since
the 1970s — whose now well-thumbed books on
interiors, and so much more, I’d been collecting
for decades. Nor was it the sublime, almost temple-
eqsue nature of Kanaal (more on that later), or
my visit to the Kasteel van ’s-Gravenwezel, the
12th-century castle that Vervoordt and his wife,
May ‘rescued’ in 1984 and have since called home.(Replete with a moat, wildly romantic outbuildings
and a park-like garden, not to mention an interior
that shifts between Italian Renaissance and
Japanese Zen, the castle is one of the most magical
homes on the planet.) What was extraordinary
about Vervoordt was none of this — and all of this
— but the profound depth of feeling with which he
does, well, everything. Eleanor would have approved;
here was the very definition of an ideas man.
“The old world inspires me to create a new world,”
Vervoordt tells me as we sit in one of Kanaal’s Artist
Studios. “Every day I discover something new:
a piece of wood, furniture or a great artist. You
make yourself vulnerable, to be receptive, but it’s so
important to always look at things with open eyes
and an open heart.” His philosophy, put simply, is
rediscovering the forgotten and giving it a “better
place”, whether a fine piece of Huguenot silver, a
weathered antique timber panel or a simple found
object such as a stone. And it’s a philosophy that
resonates with his clients — Robert De Niro, Sting,
Calvin Klein and Kanye West, to name a few. ››BELOW Axel Vervoordt’s
2007 exhibition, Artempo:
Where Time Becomes Art,
at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice.80 vogueliving.com.auVLife