I fell in love with her!” exclaims Reineke Antvelink. “I think she’s just beautiful. I’m always wondering: what have you been through these past 400 years?” The Dutch interior designer is talking about her own home (“I think of the building as a she”) – a beguiling 17th-century thatched farmhouse in rural Abcoude, just 20 minutes south of Amsterdam.
Reineke left the city behind eight years ago – a move precipitated by a lengthy project in Italy. “I was working on a large retreat in northern Italy,” she explains. “I lived there on and off for a few years and the site was completely immersed in nature. Each time I went, I noticed how calm my surroundings made me feel. When the project was finished, I said to my husband, ‘I want to leave the city, I want us to live in nature.’ This was the first place we saw.”
