Homenews

In 1866, the Patriotische Gesellschaft founded The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG) in Hamburg, Germany. The institution was initially formed as a repository of both historical and contemporary examples of design to inspire producers of arts and crafts and industrial designers. Later in the first half of the twentieth century, the museum expanded to include outstanding artifacts from 4,000 years of cultural history.  

Today, the MKG continues this mission with its collection of over 500,000 objects, from art, sculpture, textiles, graphic design, fashion and musical instruments. Further, it houses one of the largest collections of ceramics and porcelain in Germany, totaling nearly 11,000 objects from antiquity to the present. The culturally diverse group of ceramics and porcelain showcase a variety of uses and types, and include objects from Meissen and Höchst, imperial porcelain from China and ceramics made by famous artists, such as Pablo Picasso. The collection offers an insight into the long history of the production of material and technical progresses. 

The ceramic collection also houses a wonderful Dutch Delftware object: a blue and white bowl-shaped flower vase with cover. Marked for Adrianus Kocx of De Grieksche A factory, it was produced at the end of the seventeenth century. The Delft potters developed many different shapes of flower vases and the earliest versions consisted of a fluted tank on a base with two handles, rather similar to the present vase. Although it is an early flower vase, it is distinctively modeled and painted in the fine manner characteristically seen under Adrianus Kocx’ ownership. The bowl and cover are delicately painted with hunting scenes. The ten spouts along the side of the cover resemble open-mouth monstrous heads, which together with the open-mouthed dragon or phoenix-shaped handles, gives the vase an exotic character that would have appealed to the prevailing tastes.

The Uppark House is a seventeenth century home located in West-Sussex England. The history of the site first began in the fourteenth century with the creation of a deer park, and in 1595, a house was built on the site by the Ford family. Although the present Uppark House was built in 1690-1694 for the Earl of Tankerville, it was Matthew Fetherstonhaugh who redecorated the house extensively from 1750 to 1760 with beautiful Rococo and Neo-classical interiors and introduced most of the existing collection of objects displayed today. Much of the furniture and works of art were assembled on Fetherstonhaugh’s Grand Tour from 1749 to 1751. The house remained largely untouched after the Regency additions until 1989, when it was badly damaged by fire. Fortunately the structure of the state rooms, and most of the contents, were saved, and over the course of 6 years, Uppark was carefully restored. 

The wide-ranging collection at Uppark House includes paintings, furniture, ceramics, and even an eighteenth-century doll house with its original contents. The ground floor rooms are decorated with exquisite French furniture, delicate Dutch ceramics and captivating Italian paintings, offering a beguiling view of eighteenth-century life in a fine country house. The saloon, which was originally the entrance hall, is decorated with two Delft blue and white flower vases with a fanning row of spouts. The flower holders are marked for Adrianus Kocx from De Grieksche A (The Greek A) factory, and can be dated to circa 1695.

Displayed in the red drawing room is a large round tiered flower holder standing next to the mantelpiece. This blue and white flower vase, which is almost one meter in height (39 in.), was also produced at De Grieksche A factory during the ownership of Adrianus Kocx. The finely decorated vase has a spectacular size and shape, with handles formed as snakes, a gadrooned foot and numerous spouts at the top. The body of the vase shows putti playing on a seesaw amidst flowering plants with large blossoms, after engravings by Jacques Stella (1596-1657). These three objects have been in the Uppark collection for several generations but were scattered across the house. In 1954, the house passed into the hands of The National Trust, and by the 1960s the four parts of this ceramic grouping were discovered to belong together, forming this extraordinary highlight. 

The Design Museum Danmark is located in the capital city of Copenhagen. Founded in 1890 by the Confederation of Danish Industries and the Ny Carlsberg Museumslegat, the museum opened to the public in 1895. Since its inception, the museum has aimed to elevate quality within design. Through their exhibitions of exemplary objects and collections, the museum seeks to raise the level of Danish industrial products and act as a source of inspiration for people working in the design industry.

The extensive collection includes arts and crafts, and industrial design from throughout the Western world, covering the periods of the late Middle Ages to today. It also comprises East Asian objects, primarily from Japan and China, from prehistoric times until the present. The museum presents an interdisciplinary collection from furniture to silver, fashion, textiles, digital design and ceramics. 

The collection of ceramics is quite unique in terms of its size and representation; it covers all known techniques within the main groups of earthenware, stoneware, tin-glazed earthenware and porcelain as well as new hybrid materials and techniques. The collection illustrates the history of pottery within a very wide geographical area which, besides European and Danish pottery, also includes East Asian pottery. The collection spans an impressively long chronological period stretching from Neolithic Chinese pottery from the third millennium BC to the very latest ceramic experiments by contemporary Danish potters.

There are many Delftware works of art in the collection, from dishes and butter tubs to flower vases and garnitures. The collection encompasses blue and white to polychrome grand feu and petit feu objects. A particularly rare object is a seventeenth century blue and white covered spice bowl, which reflects the new dining culture brought to Europe from other parts of the world through trade. A table set with this type of bowl was considered prestigious, allowing guests to flavor their food with exotic spices. Although the bowl is not marked, it is attributed to De Grieksche A (The Greek A) factory because of its similarity to other spice bowls made by the pottery.

Located near the Rhine river in the Palais Nesselrode, the Hetjens Museum preserves, researches and presents the universal history of ceramics. The collection encompasses objects from the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, pre-Columbian America, antiquity and the Middle Ages. Accordingly, all ceramic materials, earthenware, stoneware, faience and porcelain are represented. Special emphasis is placed on the current ceramic art.

The museum owes its name and the foundation of its collection to Laurenz Heinrich Hetjens (1830 – 1906). In 1866, Hetjens married the wealthy older widow Maria Catharina Regnier and subsequently retired from business. With greater time and resources, Hetjens devoted himself to his real passion: collecting and researching art. He had a preference for Rhineland stoneware from the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods. Hetjens acquired important pieces in the art trade, participated in excavations and became a recognized expert through his research. When he died in 1906, a posthumous foundation of his extensive art collection was established, which provided funding for his museum that has forever to bear his name.

Although the museum was originally established with a more broad collection, it changed course after a reorganization in 1926 to exclusively acquire ceramics that would complement Hetjens’ original collection.  

The extensive collection includes several objects of Dutch Delftware. Amongst others, there is a cashmere palette flower holder with fanning rows of spouts and open-mouthed wyvern handles from circa 1700 and in a rather similar model, but in blue and white, there is a flower vase from De Witte Starre (The White Star) factory. Objects from the late seventeenth century include a blue and white bowl and covered flower holder with open-mouthed dragon handles, which was probably produced at De Grieksche A factory.

The Centraal Museum is located in the Dutch city of Utrecht, and is the oldest municipal museum in the Netherlands. It first began in 1830 as a four-room institution on the top floor of the Utrecht town hall, and officially opened to the public on 5 September 1838. The museum welcomed visitors every Wednesday afternoon for 25ct. The driving force behind the ‘Municipal Museum of Antiquities’ was avid amateur historian Mayor H.M.A.J. Van Asch van Wijck (1774 – 1843). Although he strived to categorize and expand the collection, the museum remained no more than an antiquities room. When town archivist Samuel Muller FZ. took office in 1874, he managed to revive the museum after Van Asch van Wijk had passed away. He renovated and reorganized the museum, devised somewhat of a system, and put serious effort into expanding the collection. Under his direction the museum moved to estate Het Hoogeland on the Biltstraat in 1891. 

Since 1921, the Centraal Museum has been housed in the Agnes Convent on Nicolaaskerkhof. This former cloister from the Middle Ages was successively used as a factory, orphanage and a barracks. The Utrecht town collection was then merged with various private collections into one ‘central’ museum. The Centraal Museum has an extensive collection of around 50,000 objects consisting of old masters, modern art, applied art, design and fashion. Although not on view, there is also a small Delftware collection, consisting of plates and vases, but also a blue and white tea canister with chinoiserie decoration and a pair of blue and white candlesticks attributed to ’t Fortuyn (the Fortune) factory during the leadership of widow Van den Briel-Elling. Also in the collection is a pair of blue and white duck-form boxes, attributed to De Roos (The Rose) factory during the ownership of Dirck van der Does from 1755 to 1770. An absolute highlight is a bowl and cover flower holder made under the ownership of Adrianus Kocx, owner of De Grieksche A (The Greek A) factory from 1686 to 1701.

The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and school for the fine arts in 1879 and is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. 

The origins for the Institute began in 1866, when a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design with the intent to run a free school with its own art gallery. The organization was modeled after European art academies, such as the Royal Academy. The Academy was a success, but the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 threw a spanner in the works. It destroyed the building and the Academy suffered from debt. This lead to the founding of a new organization, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (now the Art Institute of Chicago) in 1879, which bought the assets of the Chicago Academy of Design at auction.

The first collections consisted primarily of plaster casts, but nowadays the collection encompasses more than 5,000 years of art from cultures around the world. It has grown from plaster casts to nearly 300,000 works of art ranging from Chinese bronzes to contemporary design and from textiles to installation art. The European decorative arts collection includes some 25,000 objects of furniture, metalwork, glass, enamel, ivory and ceramics from 1100 A.D. to the present day. It also comprises a group of Dutch Delftware objects, dating from the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. Amongst the objects are vases, plates and chargers, but also a blue and white figure of a Budai Heshang from circa 1700. From the same period is a polychrome cashmere palette tea canister, which is marked for Lambertus van Eenhoorn who was the owner of De Metaale Pot (The Metal Pot) factory from 1691 to 1721.

In the city of Wieliczka in Poland, near its former capital Cracow, is the Cracow Saltworks Museum and Mine located. Between the 11th and the 12th century, Wieliczka was the largest salt processing centre in Małopolsk. At the end of the 13th century, the enterprise Cracow Saltworks was developed, comprising salt mines in Wieliczka, which operated in this organizational form for almost 500 years as one of the largest enterprises in Europe. The castle in Wieliczka was the historical seat of the mine’s management board between the 13th century and 1945. It regulated the life of the saltworks employees: it housed a court, a prison, a saltworks kitchen and a chapel. Renovated at the effort of the Cracow Saltworks Museum Wieliczka, it opened its doors to visitors in 1985.

The Cracow Saltworks Museum has been collecting saltcellars since 1973. Currently, the collection has approximately 800 objects, spanning the period from the 17th century to the modern times. There are saltcellars made of porcelain, silver, tin, glass, wood, faience, as well as more uncommon materials, such as bone, quartz and mother-of-pearl. The greatly diversified collection encompasses individual saltcellars, pairs of saltcellars, saltcellars forming sets for spices, as well as items from dinner sets.

 The museum’s elaborate collection comprises also Delftware saltcellars. For example, a pair of blue and white heart-shaped saltcellars from circa 1685. This early pair of saltcellars has a particular unusual shape with a beautiful chinoiserie decoration of a bird perched on a leafy branch. Delft salt cellars with blue and white chinoiserie patterns from the late seventeenth century can be found in various shapes, largely based on silver prototypes.

Kingston Lacy is an elegant seventeenth-century Italianate mansion and estate in Dorset, southern England. It was built for Sir Ralph Bankes, after the family’s main seat, Corfe Castle was ruined during the Commonwealth. The mansion remained in the Bankes family for more than 300 years and its sumptuous interiors contain some of the oldest established gentry collection of paintings in Britain. The collection includes works by Rubens, Brueghel, Van Dyck, Titian and Tintoretto; and a large collection of Egyptian artefacts. Among the lavishly decorated interiors is the Spanish Room, with an early seventeenth-century Venetian ceiling and gilded leather hangings; neo-Caroline ceiling plasterwork; oak and cedar panelling; and a coved and painted eighteenth-century saloon ceiling. 

Kingston Lacy also houses a small collection of Dutch Delftware. These Delftware objects were probably purchased by Margaret Parker, with whom John Bankes married in 1691. She dedicated herself to the decoration of the house and made several purchases in the field of Delftware. The most outstanding objects that she assembled are a late seventeenth-century three-piece composed garniture and a pair of flower holders with fanning rows of spouts marked for Lambertus van Eenhoorn. Another interesting highlight is a late seventeenth-century flower vase with a fanning row of spouts with the bust of a gentleman that might be William III, located below a wreath on the front.

In the nineteenth century, Kingston Lacy was encased in stone and its interior refitted to provide a suitable setting for the collection of paintings and other works of art, such as Egyptian antiquities, acquired by William John Bankes (1786-1855). The house was bequeathed to the National Trust upon the death of Henry John Ralph Bankes in 1982.

The Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library is an American estate and museum in Winterthur, Delaware. In the early twentieth century, collector and horticulturist Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969) and his father designed Winterthur in the spirit of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European country houses. Almost 60 years ago, H.F. du Pont opened his childhood home to the public.

Du Pont was initially a collector of European art and decorative art. Subsequently, he became a highly prominent collector of American decorative arts, building on the Winterthur estate to house his collection, conservation laboratories, and administrative offices. He formed the original collection and added to it until his death in 1969. Winterthur curators continue to fill gaps in the collection and build upon its strengths.

The Winterthur Museum houses nearly 90,000 objects made or used in the USA between about 1640 and 1860. The collection is displayed in the magnificent 175-room house, much as it was when the Du Pont family lived there, as well as in permanent and changing exhibition galleries. The collection is organized in several main categories, such as ceramics, glass, furniture, metalwork, paintings and prints, and textiles and needlework.

Famous for its American artwork, the collection is amplified with objects from other regions of the world, illustrating the active role the country played in the international market. Winterthur’s ceramics collection includes some 19,000 objects of types made in or imported into the USA from the 1600s through the mid-1800s. The earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain in the collection represent an unusually broad range of manufacturing and design types and have special strengths among American, English, and Chinese wares. The collection houses several early Dutch Delftware objects, such as dishes and chargers, vases and a kendi. An eighteenth century highlight is a tureen marked for Justus Brouwer, the owner of De Porceleyne Bijl (The Porcelain Axe) factory, from circa 1755 (in the Campbell collection of Soup Tureens). Tureens are not commonly found in Dutch Delftware and this example is a rare survival. 

The Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum has recently redisplayed its permanent collection, showcasing the exciting juxtapositions between its collection of old masters and modern art. Opened in 1849, the institution is one of the most visited in the Netherlands. The museum has a diverse collection ranging from medieval to contemporary art, with a focus on Dutch art. As its name indicates much of the collection originated from two private collections: Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. While Boijmans’s private collection consisted chiefly of seventeenth century Dutch paintings, drawings, prints and porcelain, Van Beuningen collected fifteenth and sixteenth-century art from the Northern and Southern parts of the Netherlands.

The museum has a distinctive Delftware collection of exceptional pieces made by the Moriaanshooft factory when the factory was led by the members of the Hoppesteyn family. The objects made by Het Moriaanshooft in this period are amongst the most rare and remarkable of all Delftware production. Jannetge van Straten and her son Rochus Hoppesteyn were amongst the first to experiment with polychrome decoration, and this remarkable pair of polychrome vases demonstrates their skill. The three medallions of these vases illustrate the Niobe legends. These illustrations are taken from a 1528 freeze by Polidoro Caldara (named Da Caravaggio) on the façade of the palace of Giovanni Antonio Milesi in Rome. 

At the end of the year, Delftware amateurs will have access to the entire collection. Objects previously in storage will be on view at the museum’s public art depot.

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge owes its foundation to Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion who, in 1816, bequeathed his works of art and library to the University of Cambridge. His contribution, together with funds to house them, was intended to further “the Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation”. His bequest included 144 pictures, among them Dutch paintings and masterpieces by Titian and Veronese. He also collected engravings, and his library included 130 medieval manuscripts and a collection of autographed music by Handel and other composers. Since the opening of the Founder’s Building in 1848, the collection has grown with gifts, bequests and purchases.

The Fitzwilliam Museum houses an enormous variety and depth of collections, from the antiquities and fine printed books to paintings, furniture and silver. Moreover, the Fitzwilliam Museum is home to one of the most important collections of European, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern ceramics. Entirely absent in the Founder’s Bequest, ceramics from all periods and geographic locations were actively collected under the directorship of Sir Sydney Cockerell (1908-37) and continue to be acquired today. Both earthenware and porcelain are represented in the collection in myriad forms, from tableware and tiles to vases and sculptures.

In 1928, a large bequest of around 3,000 objects was given to the museum by Dr. James Whitbread Glaisher (1848-1928), a mathematician at Trinity College, Cambridge. Glaisher assembled a notable collection of Delftware and English earthenware via emulations of Delft items. Many of the objects in this bequest form a large portion of the Delft collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The varied collection of Delftware that the Fitzwilliam houses includes several outstanding objects: a bowl and cover flower vase and a large flower vase with handles marked for Adrianus Kocx, blue and white and polychrome flower vases marked for Lambertus van Eenhoorn, a brown-glazed teapot, several trompe l’oeil tureens, a figural cistern, a yellow-ground sample plaque, a group of a lady and a lad in a boat and a black teapot marked for Lambertus van Eenhoorn.

Duivenvoorde is a unique thirteenth-century castle and estate located in the town of Voorschoten in the Netherlands. The estate and castle have been in the same family for centuries and continues to be inhabited today. For eight centuries, Duivenvoorde was inherited by the families Van Wassenaer (thirteenth-eighteenth century), Steengracht (nineteenth century) and Schimmelpenninck van der Oye (twentieth century). In 1960, Duivenvoorde was entrusted to an estate by Baroness Ludolphine Henriette Schimmelpenninck van der Oye.

The Duivenvoorde castle has fourteen historic interiors, spanning the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Each room has its own distinct character; one can admire a Marot hall, a Cuir de Cordoue cabinet, a porcelain room and a library. While the fourteen rooms vary in period decoration, the front house retains its seventeenth-century state. It is decorated with several beautiful portraits of the former residents of the castle to honor the rich and storied history. Delftware is also represented; an early blue and white Delft garniture decorates a cabinet, as well as many other blue and white seventeenth-century vases. The castle also houses beautiful eighteenth-century polychrome plaques and dishes.