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Delftware, or Delft pottery, refers to the blue and white pottery made in and around Delft in the Netherlands, and includes objects such as plates, ornaments and tiles. It also includes the tin-glazed pottery made in the Netherlands from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Delftware is a type of pottery in which a white glaze is applied, usually decorated with metal oxides. The earliest tin-glazed pottery in the Netherlands was made in Antwerp in 1512. The manufacture of painted pottery may have spread from the south to the northern Netherlands sometime during the 1560s. Much of the finer work was produced in Delft, but simple everyday tin-glazed pottery was also made in places such as Gouda, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Dordrecht.

The use of a type of clay rich in calcium compounds allowed the Dutch potters to refine their technique and to make finer items. From about 1615, the potters began to coat their pots completely in white tin glaze and began to cover the tin-glaze with clear glaze, which gave depth to the fired surface and smoothness to cobalt blues, ultimately creating a good resemblance to porcelain.

Antique Oak Wall Shelf Coat Plate Rack Blue Delft Tile
US $589.00 (0 Bid)
End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 7:29:37 PDT
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Delfts Blue Water / Milk Decorative Pitcher
US $9.99 (0 Bid)
End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 8:17:28 PDT
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RARE ANTIQUE ANNO 1657 DELFT SEA CREATURE NEPTUNE TILE
US $199.95
End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 8:50:31 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $199.95
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RARE ANTIQUE ANNO 1657 DELFT SEA CREATURE NEPTUNE TILE
US $199.95
End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 8:51:32 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $199.95
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Delftware ranged from simple household items of plain white earthenware with little or no decoration to fancy artwork. Most of the Delft factories made sets of jars, and pictorial plates were made in abundance, illustrated with religious motifs, native Dutch scenes with windmills and fishing boats, hunting scenes, landscapes and seascapes. Sets of plates were made with the words and music of songs; dessert was served on them and when the plates were clear the company started singing. The Delft potters also made tiles in vast numbers over a period of two hundred years and many Dutch houses still have tiles that were fixed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Today, Delfts Blauw (Delft Blue) is the brand name hand painted on the bottom of ceramic pieces identifying them as authentic and collectible. Although most Delft Blue borrows from the tin-glaze tradition, it is nearly all decorated in underglaze blue on a white clay body and very little uses tin glaze, a more expensive product.
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