In-depth Articles

De Klaauw is among the most prosperous and longest running Delftware factories. Throughout its existence, the successive owners and managers succeeded by adapting to the changing demands of the market and the varied clientele. In the sixteenth century, the city of Delft was famous for its textile and brewing industries. At its apogee, the city…

Although porcelain features in hundreds of seventeenth century Dutch still life paintings, paintings portraying Dutch Delftware are more rare. During the seventeenth century Dutch artists had easier access to Chinese porcelain, which was imported to the Netherlands by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) at the beginning of the century. Meanwhile, the production of Delftware…

In the seventeenth century, interior design was used as a means of image cultivation by the Royal court, and especially by women. Lavishly decorated grand kitchens, bathrooms and the most sensational of rooms, the porcelain room (or the chinoiserie cabinet) communicated the wealth and prestige of its inhabitants. These designated rooms for porcelain, and later…

Dogs have been beloved human companions for thousands of years. In ancient Egypt, dogs were used for hunting, and they were domesticated over 10,000 years ago in the Far East. In the early modern period dogs assisted during the hunt, pulled carts, and were also kept as companions. Many contemporary paintings also show that several…

Beginning in the early 1680s, Delft potteries began to mark their wares with either the pottery owner’s initials or the name of the factory. While not every object from this period is marked, it is possible to gain an understanding of the technical and artistic achievements of specific factories based on the marked wares from…

Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem (1622-1683) was a prolific Dutch painter and draughtsman, producing over 800 paintings and at least 57 etchings.[1] His work was greatly esteemed and prints after him are numerous. These prints were used as wall decoration, were collected in books but also were used by artists as models. Undeniably, prints by or after…

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…