Jan. 2, 2025: Spijkertegel: rare & polychromatic birds

We introduce you to the famous and fabulously rare 'spijkertegel' made with our AI... Spijkertegel is Dutch for 'nail tile', and it is one of the most sought after Delft tiles.

At Christie's auctionhouse in 2005, just one spijkertegel realised 2,349 Euros alone! They are characterised by a beautifully polychrome bird perching on a stark iron nail that has been hammered into a white plaster wall, represented by the blank space. The subject's simplicity contrasts brilliantly with exquisite treatment, colours, and observed detail of the bird, which is depicted often in lively moments.

There are thought to be only 250 spijkertegels in the world, and virtually all of them derive from a single workshop in the Dutch city of Gouda, namely, The Swan or "De Swaen", founded in 1621 by Willem Jansz Oliviers (alias Willem Verswaen). It operated for some 100 hundred years before folding in the 18th century.

In honour of the spijkertegel from Gouda, and using the power of AI, we now offer infinite variations of this design.

We have collected some of the best designs in a Collection, found on our Collection page. Here we present a beautiful chequerboard arrangement of the "spijkertegel" tiles with marbling tiles (or "gevlamed", meaning "flamed"). The fantastical shades of the bird's plumage are picked up and magnified by the marbled tiles, which act as an excellent foil. We also present some of the riffs our trained spijkertegel model can produce, combining the birds with items seen in traditional Dutch still lifes, like the vanitas skull, or a leatherbound book.