When Henry van de Velde (1863- 1957) founded the School of La Cambre, which at that time was called the Superior Institute of Decorative Arts – he was already over 60 years old. His busy international career as an architect and decorator had not allowed him the time to build his pedagogical “laboratory,” which he had dreamed about since he arriving in Weimar in 1902, and his founding in 1908 of the School of Decorative Arts of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. That school was a modest, short-lived adventure, and unfortunately van de Velde was obliged to close it in 1915 – which nonetheless laid the ground for the first Bauhaus founded by Gropius in 1919.