His company was taken over in 1901 by De Distel, and Nienhuis became in charge of the decorative department.

In his early jewelry design, until 1912, Nienhuis used simple abstracted natural ornaments in both the decoration and in the shape.

In 1912 Nienhuis moved from Haarlem to the German city of Hagen, where he was a teacher at a newly established Kunstgewerbeschule.

In this time as an independent potter, he made unica with characteristic simple forms.

In 1953 Nienhuis Dirk Hubers, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, Piet Wiegman and Frans Wildenhain took part in the exhibition "five contemporary potters" in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which was one of the first museum presentations of modern artisan ceramics in the Netherlands.