‘Dutch design’ at its best is found in the work of china and earthenware designers such as Chris van der Hoef, Edmond Bellefroid and Floris Meydam. It is with good reason that their work has been collected by many museums. Let us take a closer look at one of the highlights of these Dutch star designers: Click here.
This website intends to highlight ceramic design from the Netherlands. High-profile designers and their work - contemporary, trendy, surprising and sometimes staggering - will be discussed here.
Right after the first World War the earthenware industry in the Netherlands experienced difficult times. The Goedewaagen company was doing relatively well because of the continuing demand for gouda pipes. But the market for simple commodity earthenwares was declining, forcing them to formulate a new business strategy. Read more about Goedewaagen:
Breakfast service by
Hendrik Berlage and Piet Zwart
Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg presented his first egg shell porcelain series with fanfare in 1899. A journalist of the Algemeen Handelsblad wrote: [...] ‘Now the moment had come to move the curtain aside. And the new product, shining and smiling, beckoned us, its distinguished finesse and fragility set against a background of blue-grey velvet. Before us was a range of products: saucers, coffee and tea services, vases, mugs and dishes, all in purest milky white and decorated with stylized chrysanthemums, tulips and other flowers. Enraptured we drew closer and saw for ourselves that its fine structure could compete for translucence and lightness with its famous examples from Japan, Saxony and France. Such a wealth of colours, such tasteful decoration.’
Read more about the Haagse Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg:
above: Rozenburg, tea- or coffeepot,
decoration Samuel Schellink, (1899)
photo: Proportio Divina Arnhem
right: Rozenburg: porseleinen teapot,
decoration Samuel Schellink, (1902)
photo: Proportio Divina
Much attention will also be paid to artists who are now considered the founding fathers of Dutch design, including their products and the manufacturers they made their designs for. After all, who would Andries Copier have been without the Glasfabriek Leerdam?
Zuid-Holland:
'4300'
Chris van der Hoef
1926
Dutch design tradition
Dutch Design is a well-known concept far beyond the little country on the North Sea where it originated. Contemporary designers such as Hella Jongerius, Marcel Wanders and Piet Hein Eek sell their work across the globe, where it is included in many of the important collections of applied art.
Of course, it is their talent that has brought them this far. But their talent might not have developed as it did if they had not grown up in an environment with a long and successful design tradition. Artists like Hendrik Berlage, Andries Copier, Floris Meydam and many others have paved the way. They created the context in which younger generations could flourish.
English pages of Serviezendomein,
a webmagazine about design and ceramics