Delft, Netherlands –
“It’s the coldest winter since 1928,” the man behind the counter told us.
Great.
It had been spring-like weather the week before, but we happened to be visiting during an extreme cold snap, with high winds.
We were not prepared.
So, after a brief bit of shopping for a hat that wouldn’t fly off my head with the slightest breeze, we backtracked a little to take a few photos of things we had passed on our walk from the B&B where we were staying.
As we were taking our photos, we ended up just outside the Primehof, the former palace of William of Orange.
As with many former palaces across Europe, it was now a museum.
I think this must have something to do with palaces having lots of large, spacious rooms. These tend to lend them to become museums over other potential uses.
That and often being centrally located in town.
It all adds up.
Besides, who wants to have to maintain this old, very large, historical building in the midst of everything?
It’s not really practical as a residence anymore.
Unless you are extremely wealthy.
And then you are more likely to want to live in the country palace, not the city one.
Of course, there is that unruly mob thing, with their torches and pitchforks, gathering outside the door.
If revolutions have taught the filthy rich anything, it’s that the mob is smaller in the country…
Or at least were so at one time.
Back when there were only two forms of transit, horse or foot.
So, these spacious downtown palaces are now often museums.
It allows the city to keep a big piece of their history in tact, and open to the teeming masses.
The unruly mob, so to speak.
And the Primehof is no exception.
Plus, it allows us to spend time indoors.
Out of the bitter cold.
Inside, we toured the exhibit on Delft ceramics.
It was very interesting, showing the full history, starting with the types of ceramics that were being made prior to the importation of fine porcelain from China.
And then suddenly, the plate makers had competition.
And their customers preferred the finer wares of the newcomers.
So, as is the case with true capitalism, where the markets aren’t bundled in a straightjacket to keep the status quo propped up, the old, inefficient, established ceramic makers found themselves with a difficult decision to make.
Adapt or die.
A lot of them closed, unable to compete with the thinner, lighter, finer ceramics that the traders were importing.
But there was a group of plate makers in Delft that decided to take the harder path.
They adapted.
Through trial and error, they were able to refine their techniques and eventually learned to make the thin, fine china that was popular.
Once they had this accomplished, then they started to decorate the dishes with designs like the ones coming in from the Far East.
Only instead of decorating them with scenes of oriental landscapes, they painted them with scenes of Dutch life.
And they were a success.
The dishes became renowned by the name of the town in which they were being made, Delft.
At that point, the exhibition changed from showing how the type of ceramics being produced locally had changed, along with a couple of videos showing the manufacturing techniques, to showing examples of the wide variety of what was made as time went on.
It was a somewhat brief history of dining, as the types and styles of serving dishes changed over the years.
The plates that people ate off may have changed some over the years, but not much compared to the extensive array of diverse platters, bowls, and pitchers that food was served from.
Eventually, we came to the modern section, where popular opinion of the Delft brand has fallen into the category of kitsch, and thus is not quite the hot-seller it once was.
Enter a number of artists, each using the ceramics as a medium for expressing their artistic ideas.
Think dining sets as modern art.
Eventually, we made our way to a large room where the wide variety of art that has been made with Delft ceramics was available for viewing.
Along with squares of paper and an invitation to write your own motto, to be hung on a wall of actual ceramic tiles, each with an artist-written motto of their own.
Among the exhibits were a number of ceramic windmills, figurines, shoes, and even a guitar and bicycle.
And then there were the non-ceramic items that were decorated in the style of Delft ceramics, blue designs on white.
You had your plush toys, and lots of clothing.
Mostly women’s dresses, but there was one man’s suit.
It looked like something you’d expect an Elvis impersonator to wear.
White, with blue designs on either side of the jacket.
There was definitely a lot of kitsch in this room.
Once we had completed our loop around the room, we continued on to the other parts of the museum, where we got to see the works of the various Delft masters of painting.
Well, most of the Delft masters, the most famous one was missing from the collection.
That’s right, there were no Vermeer’s in the collection.
Still, there were plenty to ooh and ah over.
As we came down the stairs, back down to the main level, we found ourselves in the midst of a group of schoolchildren on a field-trip. They were being organized into groups of three or four, and given briefcases that contained tools for conducting an investigation.
It seems they were being tasked with solving the assassination of William of Orange.
Hmm, seems a bit late for that, he’s been dead for several hundred years.
So, they began cracking open their toolsets, making their plans, and examining the damage to the wall where the bullets had lodged.
All the while, overhead on a video screen, played a reenactment of the assassination.
We got to watch as William got up from the dinner table in the next room, walked into this hallway, and was shot by an assassin who immediately fled the scene.
Seems like a pretty open-and-shut case to me…
For more photos of Delft, click here.
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