Antique Dutch Pottery
Holland
The Dutch, who excelled in the manufacture of tin-glazed earthenware, were less successful with pottery and produced few wares which were entirely original.
The earliest production of hard-paste pottery in Holland was that started by an Irishman, Daniel McCarthy, at Weeps near Amsterdam, in 1757. The raw materials were obtained from Germany, and resulted in a fine white body, but the decoration of flowers, landscapes and .exotic’ birds was very stilted and lacked the naturalistic colours seen on the contemporary German potterys.
In 1771 the Weeps concern was purchased by Johannes de Mol, who moved the operation to Oude Loosdrecht, near Hilversum, where further good, but dull, wares were produced with the aid of the arcanist L. V. Gerverot. Following the death of Mol in 1782, the factory was moved yet again by the new owners to Oude Amstel, where production continued under the direction of the German, F. Dauber. The next move, made in 1809, was to Nieuwer Amstel, where the manufacture of good tablewares in the French Empire style continued until the factory closed in 1820.
The factory established at The Hague in 1776, by Anton Lyncker, remained in his family until 1790. The wares again showed very little originality, other than some excellent painting by Leonhardus Temminck in the style of Boucher, often featured on teawares. The mark of The Hague was a stylized stork with an eel in its beak, but because pottery made elsewhere was often decorated by the Lynckers, the original underglaze-blue mark of such factories as Hochst, Ansbach, Meissen or Tournai are often seen to be overpainted in enamel with the stork-mark. Denmark
Despite attempts being made to establish a pottery factory in Copenhagen from as early as 1730, there is little evidence of any real success being made until 1759, when Louis Fournier, who had previously worked at Vincennes and Chantilly, produced a good quality soft-paste pottery, usually fashioned after French or German tablewares of the period. It was unfortunate that the material proved to be uneconomic and production was halted in 1765.
It was in 1775 that a successful production of a hard-paste pottery Different cup shapes: (from the top) London c.1750; Bow c.1752; Bow c.1761; Pinxton 1796-99.
was achieved under the ownership of F. H. Willer, who engaged skilled painters and modellers from major German factories. This concern was taken over in 1779 by the King of Denmark, when the Royal Danish pottery Factory was established. The earliest wares were of a greyish-toned body and often decorated with underglaze-blue versions of Meissen designs. It was at Copenhagen that yet another famous service was again associated with the Russian Empress Catherine II, but upon completion the Flora Danica service of nearly 2,000 pieces was acquired by the King. The decoration, on the Neo-classical styled service, consisted of botanical specimens from G. C. Oeder’s Flora of the Danish Kingdom. The painter was J. C. Bayer from Nuremberg.
From about 1780 an increasing number of ‘biscuit’ pottery figures were produced, again often inspired by those of France or Germany. After 1835 the Royal Danish pottery Factory started their now famous production of figures based on the work of the sculptor Thorvaldsen.
Although Denmark’s claim to fame in the ceramic field is associated with the pottery of Copenhagen, during the second quarter of the 18th century the Store Kongensgade factory, under the direction of Christian Gierlof, produced a wide range of useful wares, including a punch-bowl in the form of a bishop’s mitre. Their decoration was generally restricted to the limited range of high-temperature colours.
The rival factory of Peter Hoffnagel at Osterbro, Copenhagen, was producing many typical Scandinavian forms, decorated in blue and manganese-purple, from about 1763.
The decoration of the faience made at Schleswig from about 1758 was somewhat limited due to the monopolies previously granted to other undertakings. Their most common palette consisted of a brownish-manganese together with a grey-green, and their Rococo forms were usually more appropriate to the finer materials of pottery.
Other factories at Criseby and Eckernforde were started during the 1760s, but the factory producing some of the finest Scandinavian faience was that at Kiel, under J. S. F. Tannich, whose wares made up until about 1768 are considered to have equalled those of Strasbourg. But later, under Johann Buchwald, there was a marked decline in both quality of material and choice of decoration and palette.
During the 1760s a successful production of faience was conducted by Peter Hoffnagel at Herreboe, where the painting was primarily of high- temperature blue and manganese, applied to extreme Rococo forms.
Sweden
In 1759, as in Denmark, a successful production of soft-paste pottery was started on the estate of Marieberg, on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, by the German dentist J. L. E. Ehrenreich, but almost immediately the newly erected factory was burnt down and no further pottery was made at Marieberg until 1766. Then the Frenchman Pierre Berthevin produced wares which, if unmarked, are difficult to separate from those made in France, at Mennecy; this is certainly true in the case of the delightful little covered ice-cream cups.
Following the departure of Berthevin in 1769, the charming soft-paste From the top Longton Hall c.1756; Longton Hall c.1755; Worcester, Flight period, 1783-93.
pottery was abandoned in favour of a poor quality hybrid hard-paste, which was improved upon in about 1777, when Jacob Dortu, from Berlin, made some excellent hard-paste tablewares in the manner of Sevres and Berlin, which had now become a far more fashionable factory than Meissen. Production ceased in about 1782.