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Holland.com > Travel > Featured > Delft Pottery - The real story

Sep 22, 2007 12:06 AM GMT

By: RikerVP

RikerVP

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08/29/2007

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01/07/2009

Delft Pottery - The real story

Delft Pottery - Delft, NL

Today Ina and Ken go to Delft in search of the famous Delft Pottery Factory. This is a world known pottery maker famous for it quality and decorative pieces.

We were invited to take a tour of the facility and we were given a a step by step instruction toured each of the departments in de Plauw.
We met with Nico a kind fellow that has run the factory for many years and he greeted us with a genuine smile and was very informative he gave us a great deal of his time and answered any question we had.

Ken (aka Riker) Ina & Nico (Manager)

Delft Blauw Factory Tour.

(Below) A young lady tour guide gives us information on how the pottery is made and shows us the kiln. As well, we see all the pottery stored on shelves ready for the decoration process.

What we found particularly interesting was the fact that all of the pottery made here can not be bought at your local market place and all genuine pottery has a specific marking from what factory and what artist produced it.(below)

Here Ina (above), shows us the distintive markings made from one of two Delft Blauw factories still in exsistance in Delft.

So when you by Delt Blue pottery look for these markings to ensure that you get genuine Delft Blauw pottery.

From that point on we went into the artist room and watched and talked to the artists, whom were very friendly and greeted us with warmth and invited us to conversation and encouraged us to ask any questions we might have had.

Here Ina looks at one of the pieces a work in progress.

We watched as the artists freely drew designs and let us watch them as they continued their work.

What was intersting was to watch ans see them do they're work and see it on the board just before it went to firing. The artist rendering of drawings were amazing to watch. Here a talented artist invites us to look at his renderings and his work here is phenonminal, truly a work of art as seen in these photos below.

Artists pose for group photo, we would like to personal thank them all for their time and the information they provided to us today. (Ina en Ken).

After the initial tour through the facility we went on to the store area where all items of pottery are sold and we looked at what they have produced for sale to the general public.

We would personlly like to thank Nico and his staff for an exceptional great tour and their valuable time.
Ina en Ken.
Riker Video Productions.

Some info on "de Delftse Pauw"
Courtesy of Delft Pottery de Delftse Pauw.
Delft Pottery web site link (click here) to go direct.

In the sixteenth century, in a number of Dutch towns, factories were established which among their items produced "Majolica". This "Majolica" was made with a tin-glaze and found its origins in Italy and Spain.

The Dutch East Indian Company began importing porcelain from China in the seventeenth century. This porcelain, especially the blue and white became very popular.

The "Majolica" producing factories started at a certain moment to imitate this Chinese porcelain, because of several reasons. The imported Chinese porcelain meant competition. Civil war in China made that imports from China went down. Customers asked for specific items which due to distance took a long time to deliver and due to language problems the delivered item was not always what was ordered.

In Delft, in the seventeenth century 32 factories were producing Delftware. One of them was a factory called "de Paauw". These factories were often established in beerbreweries which had stopped their production.

In the nineteenth century due to competition from other factories like Wedgewood in England and lack of innovations, the highlight of Delftware had come to a close. Nowadays in Delft only a few companies still produce the entirely handpainted traditional Delftware. One of these companies is "de Delftse Pauw". A company which is very loyal to this tradition.

The entirely handpainted decorations always have a white background. That's why they use a white baking clay. This clay is imported from Germany, the Westerwald and from England, Cornwall. Local clay doesn't burn white but red and yellow. They mix the clay with water to get a liquid clay and we pour this liquid clay into moulds. The moulds are made out of plaster of Paris which is very porous and it absorbs the water out of the clay. It makes that the clay dries. The clay dries quicker at the plasterwall as it does in the middle. As a result of this, a thin claywall forms itself. After half an hour the claywall is already 4 mm thick but in the middle it's still liquid. At that moment they turn the moulds upside down to pour out the remaining liquid clay. That's how they make an article hollow. After about four hours the clay is dry enough to open the moulds and the clay vase can be taken out of the mould. The edges are trimmed with a knife and the article is smoothed with a wet sponge. The articles are dried for three days before they are put into an electric heated kiln.

The firing takes 8 hours and the temperature reaches 1040 degrees Centigrade (which is about 1900 degrees Fahrenheit). The cooling down takes about 24 hours. During the firing, the clay changes into stone which is called biscuit. Directly on this biscuit they paint their decorations entirely by hand. The painter/artist uses a black paint. After the painting, the items are glazed with a white glaze. Then the items are fired again in the electric kiln. During the firing the glaze melts and becomes transparant, the black changes into blue. The black paint consists of two oxydes: copperoxyde and cobaltoxyde. There is a chemical reaction between the black paint and the glaze and that makes that the black becomes blue. The other paints, used for the multicoloured Delft do not change colour. These paints intensify during the firing.

Delft Pottery de Delftse Pauw invites you to visit the factory.
They offer individual visitors and groups free of charge:

a tour with an explanation of the production process, conducted by one of our multilingual guides.
a visit to their show and salesroom with their collection of entirely handpainted Delftware.

Hours of Operation:

..>..>

From 1st of April untill 31st of October :
Monday - Friday :	9.00 - 16.30
Saturday and Sunday :	9.00 - 16.30
From 1st of November untill 31st of March :
Monday - Friday :	9.00 - 16h30
Saturday and Sunday :	11.00 - 13.00

How to reach them :

By car and coach:

The A 13, take exit Delft Noord and follow the signs Delft Pottery.

By public Transport:

From Delft station or Den Haag Central Station, Tram 1, tramstop Vrijenbanselaan