By the 1640s Dutch tile-painters began slimming down their borders to a single, quick flourish in each corner: a few mirrored curls and a dot that together resemble a tiny spider's web, hence the name spin ('web' or 'spider' motif). The motif leaves the field relatively blank, giving each tile a crisp, minimalist look while allowing adjoining pieces to line up in perfectly balanced grids. It was among the most common corner motifs in Delftware historically, and it is very much our flagship style. Our AI model captures that crisp minimalism, including tiny chips, a nod to the well-loved originals it was trained on.

By the 1660s a new Delft look appeared: tiles with no corner motifs at all, just a lone emblem floating on a wide field of milky tin-glaze. Dropping the fleur-de-lys, ox-head and web corners reduced both pigment costs and painting time, the culmination of a decades-long shift from busy, polychrome maiolica to the spare blue-and-white of the Dutch Golden Age. The result is gorgeously minimalist and perfectly at home in modern interiors. This AI model leans into that minimalism, generating tiles with ultra-small emblems that give maximum breathing room to whitespace.

Imported Ming 'kraak' porcelain set off a craze for the Chinese-meander border in Dutch tiles from the early seventeenth: a continuous key-fret ribbon on all four sides of the tile. Almost always painted in deep cobalt, the meander frames a neat round medallion so the centre scene pops against the busy border. The pattern's rhythmic snap still feels striking today. Our AI model echoes that tight geometry, deep blue, and complex shapes.

Alongside the classic blue and white, the Dutch also used manganese to create richly purple tiles, emerging in the late 17th century and that represent a distinctive phase in Delftware production. These tiles, characterized by their rich, deep purple hues derived from manganese oxide, showcase intricate designs that blend Dutch artistic traditions with diverse foreign influences.

Similar stylistically to our fleur-de-lys style, this is a minimal and traditional style, with a vine leaf (called wingerdblad in Dutch) in each corner.