DELFT
When Horace Walpole’s ceramic treasures at Strawberry Hill came by
inheritance to Lord Waldegrave they were sent to the auction room. It
took twenty-seven days of long sessions for the auctioneers to dispose
of them, notwithstanding the fact that there were eager bidders for
every lot in his extensive collection. Of Walpole it was said:
China ’s the passion of his soul.
A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl,
Can kindle wishes in his breast,
Inflame with joy or break his rest.
And how many others there are of us who succumb to this same passion!
Pottery and porcelain have, I think, more devotées in the temples of
antiques and curios than almost any other of the household gods. Clay
feet we know them to have, but we display their shrines!
Dutch delft is one of the sorts of pottery that is especially dear to
the gatherer of things ceramic. Its popularity has brought it to be
uncommon, but if it is true that twenty years is, as statisticians say
it is, the average time for a collection to rest before it comes upon
the market again, we may take comfort in the fact that opportunities for
picking up old delft are not vanishing. We have only to lie in wait for
them, to be courageous in competition and alert in interest.
No faience has crept more winningly into literature than this to which
the quaint, quiet little city that lies between The Hague and Rotterdam
has lent its name. Here William the Silent dwelt and here he met his
tragic death. Here in the little church is the tomb of Admiral van
Tromp. Here, too, the Prince of Orange came to live. Knowles says:
With the advent of the Prince and the foreign missions, with their
extensive retinue of servants, came increased wealth on the top of
Delft’s own commercial and industrial prosperity. It did more; it
brought the cultivation of artistic feeling and luxury, and a
number of distinguished men of foreign culture and tastes--rich,
sumptuous, money-spending, arrayed in costly brocades, moving in
elegant carriages; notables and magistrates from neighbouring
provinces and towns--all with a train of officialdom pertaining to
their rank, with the strict precedence and etiquette, and the
ceremonies of the times.
The requirements of the well-to-do households of Delft gave
encouragement to the potter’s art. The Dutch were well acquainted with
the enameled and glazed pottery of Italy and of Spain. Such maiolica
ware undoubtedly inspired experiment. With the importation of the
Chinese blue-and-white porcelain--probably all that came to Europe at
that early period passed first to Holland--the distinctive faience we
know as old Dutch delft came into making, but it assumed distinctive
qualities immediately, differentiating it from either the porcelain of
China or the white-ground wares of Italy and Spain.
Some one once said to me: “I wish I could begin to collect real old
delft, but I am afraid it is so difficult to pass judgment on pieces
that without an expert to turn to constantly I should find my cabinet
full of spurious ware. Mr. Antiqueman tells me it is very difficult to
tell a piece of genuine old delft, unless one has had the years of
experience he has had with it.” Happening to have a slight acquaintance
with this Mr. Antiqueman, I did not find it difficult to understand why
he chose to throw such mystery around the subject. Personally I think
too many antique men lose more than they gain by so zealously guarding
those trade secrets that are no secrets at all.
Once to know old Dutch delft is never to forget it. The knowing of it is
not a difficult matter, once it is explained and one has contact with a
genuine piece as an object-lesson.
In the first place, old Dutch delft is a pottery, not a porcelain.
Pottery is _always_ opaque, while porcelain is always translucent. Break
a pottery object and it will be seen that it was formed of a baked clay
base glazed or enameled over with a substance that has given it a
coating which does not seem to be incorporated in substance with the
base. Break a porcelain object and you will discover that all the way
through it appears of a translucent substance. Old Dutch delft of the
earliest sort was composed of a soft, friable, reddish clay base. Dutch
delft of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a body base of
yellowish or pale-brown color.
These bases instead of being glazed were coated with an enamel-like
slip. Tin entered into the composition of this coating and this
tin-enamel gave it a surface which I should describe as densely opaque,
with a metallic feel but without the metallic lustre, for instance, of
the maiolica wares of Italy and of Spain. The surface of old delft is
absolutely different from the glazed surface of porcelain, of modern
pottery.
The modern delft of to-day is not to be confused with the old Dutch
delft. The Dutch ware made to-day which passes with the old name is a
glazed ware and not, like the old, an enameled ware. In modern so-called
delft one can see through the glaze. As I have said, old Dutch delft
presents a completely opaque surface.
Just here I should say that in some of the later sorts of old Dutch
delft a glaze was added to the enameled surface, but as the enameled
coating is there, one will readily recognize it beneath the glaze. As
the clay base of old Dutch delft was so soft and friable, the surface of
a piece was entirely coated with the tin-enamel. While it was not
metallic in the sense of having a metallic lustre like the maiolica of
Deruta or of Gubbio, light glinted across the surface of a piece of old
delft reveals a tinny sheen. The surface will prove smooth to the touch,
but it will not feel glassy as does that of a glazed ware.
So friable is old delft that it is prone to crip at the edges, there
revealing the brown body base of the under clay. A drop of strong acid
dropped on the body clay thus exposed will effervesce, since there is
carbonate of lime in the understructure of old delft. This body clay is
so soft that it is easily cut with a knife. This cannot be said of the
English Lambeth delft, which English ware, though inspired by the old
Dutch delft and contemporary with much of it, was of a much harder body
base, denser and more glossy than the Dutch clay. The enamel lay much
more closely and evenly to the body base in old Dutch delft than it did
in the English delft.
Dutch delft rarely crazed in the kiln; English delft often did so and in
consequence its enameled surface came to be glazed to prevent this.
Then one often finds the colors of the decoration of old Dutch delft to
have run--neither under nor over the enamel surface but _into_ the
enamel. This is because the colors were put upon the Dutch delft while
the enamel was still wet and fixed in it during the liquefaction and
fixing of the surface coating in the firing of the piece in the kiln. In
such pieces of English delft as show the colors of their decoration to
have run, it will be seen distinctly that these colors have run upon the
enamel of the surface and not into or with it.
Finally the color of the clay body of the Lambeth delft of England is
buff.
While nature has given us a sense of blue skies, scientists will tell
you that she has been overly sparing with blue in flowers and in bird
life. The Chinese had long placed this color as the first of the five
nominated in their popular traditions. To blue they gave a symbolism
rich and varied. They associated it with the East, for instance, and
again with wood. It is natural that it should have been a favorite color
for the Chinese ceramicist. The palace china of some of the early
Chinese emperors reserved the privilege of blue decoration, a blue, as
an old Chinese writer tells us, as “seen through a rift in the clouds
after rain.” It was not until the sixteenth century that the Chinese
obtained cobalt. This bright and vivid blue made speedy headway as
against the grayer blues that until then had alone been produced by the
Chinese ceramic artist. Cobalt was introduced into China by either the
Jesuits or the Mohammedans; the Chinese themselves named the color
“Moslem Blue.”
The blue-and-white porcelain of China appears to have made a direct
appeal to the Dutch potters. Blue was the earliest color used by them in
their delft decoration. Purple followed, and after that the green,
yellow, brown, and red of the polychrome delft pieces that we know.
We do know how popular the Dutch blue-and-white became. Every year
quantities of it found their way to England. Much of it was sold there
at the Dutch Fair held annually in Yarmouth. King Charles II soon came
to fear the effect on local potteries of the extended importation of
Dutch delft into England and in consequence issued a proclamation
against this commerce, declaring the sale of Dutch delft in England to
be “to the great discouragement of so useful a manufacture so late found
out” at home, presumably by the potters of Lambeth, who naturally would
not be slow in attempting to imitate the Dutch ware so flourishingly in
vogue. Probably Dutch potters had come over to work in the English
ateliers. In the British Museum are interesting examples of English
delft, a particularly fine set of plates having a line of poetry on
each, so that when the six are arranged in proper order they form a
little five-line verse.