In-depth Articles

Located in the west side of Oude Delff street, De Witte Ster (The White Star) factory was formerly a brewery. In 1660, two brothers-in-law, Willem Cleffius and Gijsbrecht Lambrechtsz. Cruyck, combined their assets to purchase a portion of the brewery. The two men, one an Amsterdam merchant, the other a Delft potter, had the collective…

Delftware objects displaying Dutch monarchs, royal coats of arms and symbols of the Royal House, such as the orange tree, are known as Orangist Delft. Amongst the first Orangist Delft were the painted tile portraits of Prince Maurice (the stadholder of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 to 1625),…

During the Dutch Golden Age, the craze for tulips was so high that their price exceeded the value of a canal house in Amsterdam. Several other tales illustrate the tulip phenomenon, although the line between fact and fiction is often blurred. In one exaggerated account from the 1630s, a sailor was imprisoned for eating a…

Proto-Delft is an interesting group of Dutch earthenware that is the forerunner of Delftware. It is applied to the group of objects made in the transitional period between the exclusive manufacture of majolica and the early years of faience production (ca. 1629-1669).[1] The Dutch majolica potters were faced with competition after the arrival of Chinese…

Dutch Delftware played a pivotal role in the development of European ceramics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The robust faience center of Delft was the result of two important currents of the time: the Italian production of majolica and the Chinese and Japanese wares that were imported by the Dutch East India Company (VOC).…

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fine dining was an exceedingly important social ritual, and the accompanying accessories were reflective of the owner’s status. The well-laid table was the culmination of splendor. However, dining traditions changed during these centuries and the Delft potters quickly accommodated the new tastes of the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie…

The French architect, designer and engraver Daniel Marot (1661-1752) was born into a family of artists and craftsmen. His grandfather, Girard Marot, was a cabinetmaker and his father, Jean Marot was named architect of King Louis XIV. Jean Marot (1619-1679) is well known today for his contribution to seventeenth-century French architecture. In 1686, Daniel Marot…

The individual potters, painters and decorators of Dutch Delftware have largely remained anonymous as the makers’ marks inscribed on objects typically refer to the factory owners. There are a few rare exceptions, for example Frederik van Frijtom, who sometimes signed his work with his name or initials. Another known painter is a man with the…

Despite the Portuguese importations of Asian goods starting in the early sixteenth century, Chinese porcelain was rarely seen in Europe before 1600. The small quantities of porcelain that were imported to Europe were rare and expensive, and almost exclusively collected by the nobility. In 1600, the market for Chinese porcelain changed significantly when the Dutch…

The Dutch East India Company rarely encountered problems trading Chinese porcelain until circa 1645, when civil unrest in China increasingly hampered the VOC’s business. The production of porcelain was almost stagnated in Jingdezhen, supply routes were severed, and the VOC lost Formosa as a trading base in 1661. Since the Dutch East India Company had…