The graphic designer Jan Lavies, born and bred in The Hague, designed art deco-style advertising material for various colonial hotels. In search of career opportunities, Lavies and his wife Catherina van der Straaten left in 1925 for the Dutch East Indies, where they remained until the early 1930s. With their simple lines and strong, bright colours, Lavies’s designs soon met with success in the colony. Commissions poured in from cigarette brands, shipping lines and hotel groups. These companies thought that no-one captured the modern zeitgeist that they aimed to radiate with their products better than Lavies.
A hotel vignette of Hotel Preanger in Bandung, by Jan Lavies, around 1925-1935. [KITLV 36D543]