The coming of Majolica to the Low Countries

Italian ceramic master craftsmen specialising in majolica began to move to the Low Countries (now Belgium and the Netherlands) in the early sixteenth century. Guido da Savino, thought to be the first such migrant majolica-maker from Italy, set up his workshop in the city of Antwerp in 1500.

Majolica is part of the faience family of ceramics — that is, earthenware having a tin-oxide glaze that lends bright opacity to pigments. It arose from the long engagement of Italian and Spanish ceramics and the faience of the Islamic world.

At that time, Italy and Spain were paramount centres of cultural patronage, to which all of Europe turned in their search for luxury and artistic prestige.

More immediately, the Low Countries had fallen into the political orbit of the Habsburg dynasty, also rulers of Spain and much of Italy. These diverse — but distinctly southern influences — can be seen clearly in early Dutch faience ceramics.

The rise of a new tradition: frame and figure

Having set roots in the Low Countries, the majolica tradition began to develop into a native Dutch craft with Dutch practitioners. As this process rolled on, the abstract patterns of majolica receded into the corners, creating a frame and a stage for a central emblem to take hold.Tiles became more painterly. They start to make more claims on our attention. Figures strut and fret before us.

Traditionally, majolica tiles had covered floors, but the Dutch gradually moved their majolica tiles to the walls. There was a practical consideration here too. Tiles helped to curb damp spreading up the walls, a common problem in the wet and cloudy Low Countries.

But as the tiles rose up in the room, they also began to garner higher optical interest from viewers, vying with other framed images.

The breaking of the frame

As the century wore on, the corners of Delftware tiles began to recede; frames, formerly indicated by lines that create a defined zone for the figure, were often broken.

What was left is an expansive, continuous world, a space for all creatures, thoughts, fantasies, observation of life to roll into view.

A vast, lively array of subjects proliferated: landscapes, the labours of everyday life, quiet moments of rest and reflection, wild and monstrous fantasies, religious subjects, mythological stories, scatological themes, popular news stories. The spirit of aesthetic interest and play commands the whole square. Corner motifs and frames multiply into dozens of variations.

This new, confident independence in subject matter and style, which embraced strong humane impulses towards everyday life, is a direct reflection of the social, political, and economic conditions in the Low Countries at the time.

In 1579, a number of the northern provinces in the Habsburg-controlled Spanish Netherlands revolted and united together to form the Dutch Republic.

Tiles, a respectable but cheap, mass-produced, and functional craft, appealed not only to traditional elites, but to the burgeoning middle-classes. As a new, rich, and defiant nation, the Dutch carried out a confident search for national identity in their tiles as they did in every other domain.

A world in white and blue

Majolica was noted for its exceedingly bright colours: yellows, oranges, greens, and blues. However, Delftware, from the seventeenth century onwards, moved towards a much more restrictive colour palette, often simply white and blue.

Partly, this was because Dutch business-owners were keen to capitalise on the prestige of and vogue for Chinese porcelain. The reign of the Wanli Emperor in the late Ming dynasty witnessed a boom in the Chinese economy. This had partly arisen from the lucrative trade with Europe, particularly Spain, who showered China with silver from its New World colonies. This expanded trade with China led to an influx of fine Chinese porcelain, typically white and blue, that became a sensation across Europe.

However, with the death of the Wanli Emperor in 1620 and the waning of the Ming dynasty in its last, troubled decades, the porcelain trade with Europe declined.

From then on, we see a proliferation of Chinese subject matter and Chinese motifs from Dutch producers seeking to capitalise on this gap in the market.

Chinese influence is not the sole reason for Delftware’s restricted use of colour. There are clearly also aesthetic and economic considerations. The wide, expansive white space that focuses attention on the subject of a tile is further enhanced by the restrained use of colour, as did the profit margins of producers seeking to restrict their use of expensive pigments.

The hoekmotif

The Delftware tradition is defined by the use of hoekmotieven or corner motifs, the residue of the majolica frame of the earliest Delftware tiles.

In the earliest years, tiles have frames and often create 'reserved corners' – that is, interlocking, repeated patterns that extend across a number of tiles. Subsequent reduction of the frame leads to creation of a variety of small, curled motifs in the corners. The most famous is the ox-head motif, or ossenkop.

These playfully reworked memories of majolica knotwork, themselves speaking to a legacy of abstract patterning in the Islamic world, show Delftware’s role as an inheritor of a centuries long tradition.

The convention of the hoekmotief continues to be essential. This is proven by the fact that tiles completely absent of corner motifs never take hold completely.

Hoekmotief endure because they provide a powerful focusing and framing effect. They guide our focus to the centre and charge the subject with life. Moreover, when tiles are placed together, the hoekmotieven aggregate into large clusters that lends an important, unifying visual rhythm to the whole.

The Dutch Mind in a Delftware tile

The Dutch mind spilling itself out into its tile production. Its subject matter knows no bounds. It is worth taking a brief tour. Impressionistic strokes in blue lines, minimalistic design, asymmetrical placement invigorates life and fantasy before our eyes. Life, abundant and everyday life, fantasy and religious conviction take the stage…

sack-carriers

soldiers

aristocrats

children's games

cupid defecating

solitary flowers

turtles

still-lives

landscapes

mythology

Dutch mills

Delftware conquers the globe

As the Dutch Republic reached the apogee of its power in the late seventeenth century, its faience tradition, once borrowed, was now confident and independent.

It was widely sought after by all abroad, not least for its technological refinement, which had become unrivalled in Europe. Delftware tiles become a luxury item found in the rich stately homes, follies, maisons de plaisance, palaces and castles all over Europe.

With the rise of Dutch imperial power, Delftware tiles are also found far beyond Europe too. They appear, for instance, in the oldest extant palace or kraton in Indonesia, belonging to the Sultan of Kasepuhan.

Now it’s your turn

The aesthetic of Delftware tiles was always open to life and new technologies. They served as a repository of the thoughts, passions, and fantasies of the patrons whose walls they adorned. Now, with the help of carefully-specialised AI, Delftware can continue to be a mirror of the age, a riotous and beautiful reflection of the world.

Go to the workshop!

Below are some of the many historic places where Delft tiles have been used.