|
||
Dutch ceramics of the 17th century
he early 17th
century was a time of exploration and development in Dutch ceramics. The
technique of majolica (decorated earthenware
on an opaque white tin glaze) had come from Italy as early as the beginning
of the 16th C to the southern Netherlands, an area which now would be
Belgium. From documents preserved in Antwerp it is known that the Italian
potter Guido de Savino of the famous Umbrian pottery center of Castel
Durante was working in Holland around this time.
The beauty and popularity of Italain majolica saw it traded over much of Europe and it was inevitable that the artisans who created it would eventually follow to establish new centers of production. During the late 16th C. many of them moved north following the capture of Antwerp by the Spanish and settled in various Dutch towns, including Delft. There is a certain irony in this seeing as it is again a Spanish influence hastening the spread of majolica, an art that had arrived centuries before in southern Europe through the connections of the Spanish world to the Moorish and Islamic Middle East, where the technique originated. In any case, the development of Delftware was soon to receive further impetus due to contact with another, and very different tradition.
It was early in the 17th C that Chinese trade ware began to appear in
Holland, and its impact was immediate and profound. The trading activities
of the Dutch East India company were inextricably bound up with this process
of change, and its cargoes from China, Japan and southeast Asia
of beautiful and technically sophisticated wares were in high demand.
It wasn't long before Dutch potters began to copy the appearance of this
new work, although using the quite different technique of majolica. These
copies are accomplished but it is perhaps in the partial adoption and
mingling of decorative devices that one sees the most interesting work.
It also should be realized that in looking at Chinese trade ware there
are often several traditions evident already in the overlap and mixing
of decorative motifs. For example in 1600 it would have been possible
for an early Dutch traveler to Java to see a blue and white style dish
with Islamic text in this island that was a little earlier the center
of several great Hindu and Buddist kingdoms. This dish could well have
been transported there by Arab traders after being made to order far away
in one of the great Chinese pottery centers. When you look at ceramics,
there are very few truly discreet traditions, and its history is inextricably
linked with that of trade.
Around 1670 the owners of the Dutch potteries realized that there was a demand for not only the blue and white style wares but also for more colorful polychrome pottery based on Chinese kang-hsi and Japanese Imari. As well as Chinese influence being evident in the decoration some forms were also appropriated, such as the teapot, tea caddy and gourd shaped bottle, and increasing sophistication in manufacturing techniques meant that some quite idiosyncratic shapes were to appear, perhaps the strangest of all being vases to suit that other newly acquired passion of the Dutch, tulips. However, the most typical object that came to be associated with Delft ceramics is one that is the least reliant on its form to fulfill any function at all save that of being a vehicle to carry decoration - the tile.
In no other European country did ceramic tile pictures (as opposed to mosaics) assume the importance they did in the Netherlands and they were made in great quantities, not only in Delft but in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and elsewhere. They were used to decorate corridors, cellars and hearths singly, in panels or long lines. Interestingly the polychrome tile came into existence in Holland very early, around 1600, and was followed later by the more typical blue and white Delft designs, in a record of development opposite to that found in functional wares. This may be because of the presence and knowledge of the great traditions of Islamic tiles and their use in mosques in Spain and Portugal where the local tradition of decorated tiles were known as Azulejos. Certainly the patterning of many of these early polychrome tiles borrowed extensively from Islamic designs.
The later developments in Delft tile production saw a shift not only
towards the more typical blue and white style but also to an inclusion
of what could be termed pictures as opposed to designs. Obviously the
source for these images were the paintings being produced in Holland at
this time, in much the same way as earlier the Italian 'isatore' painters
of maijolica had sourced material from drawings and prints that were themselves
based upon paintings of that period, which in their case happened to be
the renaissance. And so we see pictures on Delft tiles very similar to
those found in 17th century Dutch paintings. Pastoral scenes, genre paintings
with the domestic scenes that so characterized Dutch art, still life and
of course maritime scenes. These pictures were often realized on tile
panels, as opposed to single tiles, to give broader scope to the subject.