Gouda Pottery: From Golden Age to Forgotten Heritage
Imagine: it is the end of the 19th century and porcelain has become the epitome of luxury. Alone... That stuff is expensive and not everyone can afford it. In Gouda they had a clever idea: why not make something that looks just as beautiful, but from ordinary clay? This is how the Gouda pottery was born, an artistic imitation that was so good that it soon gained its own worldwide status
Pottery was no ordinary pottery. It was hand-decorated luxury pottery that looked like porcelain but did not have the extremely high price. The makers deliberately tried to imitate the look of the expensive ceramics, finished with both matt and glossy coloured glazes and in refined decorations. It was art for the emerging middle class, people who wanted something, but couldn't afford the top price. At the same time, the band was linked to the emerging new art style
The golden years of Art Nouveau
The real heyday of Gouda pottery coincided with two art movements: Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) and Art Deco. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the thirties, Gouda was the beating heart of this movement. Throughout the city, talented artists and craftsmen worked on vases, bowls and decorative objects with floral motifs, geometric patterns and the typical flowing lines of Art Nouveau
This period was special because different factories encouraged each other to create more and more beautiful creations. Names such as Plateelbakkerij Zuid Holland, Goedewaagen, Zenith, Regina, Flora and the Iris became household names in the art world. Each company had its own style and artists, which made for an incredible diversity of designs
Why it suddenly ended.
Around 1930 the fun was suddenly over. Why? Multiple causes came together like a perfect storm. First of all, the Jugendstil period was simply over. New art movements called for different styles, but that meant new designs, new artists and new investments. For an industry that already relied heavily on labour-intensive manual labour, this was an expensive gamble. There was a long-lasting pottery strike in Gouda.
The economic crisis of the 1930s dealt the death blow. Who still had money for expensive decoration? The production of pottery was extremely labour-intensive: often four or five times in the kiln, a lot of hand painting, expensive pigments... In times of crisis, that was simply not sustainable.
Then came the war. Fuel shortages, production barriers, and after 1945 a government that kept the economy under tight control with distribution restrictions. Even energy was rationed. So how can you make pottery that depends on high temperatures and many firing processes?
The crisis pottery: cold lacquer as an emergency solution
During this difficult time, something was created that was popularly called 'cold lacquer pottery'. A clever, but also a bit sad solution. Instead of the real glazes, the manufacturers used acrylates, so ordinary lacquer. That was half the price in heating costs and much easier to install. It looked nice, but of course it wasn't hard-wearing. A plaster on the wound, nothing more.
To the rescue: tourism and Delft blue
Large-scale tourism to the Netherlands really started to take off in the fifties. Suddenly there were masses of people looking for Dutch souvenirs. The Gouda manufacturers saw their chance and switched en masse to Delft blue. Ironically, because the city of Delft had attached its name to this product, not Gouda.
But the Gouda manufacturers had a big advantage: they still had the skilled pottery painters and their apprentices. They were able to switch from Jugendstil flowers to traditional Dutch Delft decors. Companies such as Goedewaagen, Zenith, Plateel Schoonhoven, Regina, Jumbo, de Wit and Montagne and dozens (small others) made the switch and found a new market.
The end of an era
Part of the industry chose a different route: undecorated utensils and flower pots. Larger-scale production, lower margins, supply to flower growers and department stores such as Blokker. This branch of industry was the first to lose out to the emerging competition from low-wage countries from the late 1970s onwards.
Thus ended a golden age. Gouda pottery continued to exist as a collector's item and museum piece, but the days of thriving studios full of artists were over. A story of artistic ambition, economic reality and the eternal struggle between craft and mass production. Montagne Aardewerkfabriek, founded in 1951 in Gouda, is the only remaining pottery factory with its roots deep in the heyday (Montagne Iris Gouda, Plateel Schoonhoven 1920, Jumbo Gouda) of the Gouda pottery.
Today, the remnants of that heyday can still be admired in museums and at collectors. Gouda pottery reminds us that the Netherlands was once an important player in international applied art, and that beautiful things can also arise in times of crisis.
