Product Information - Dutch Art Pottery

Gouda

Gouda Pottery and the (once) numerous other associated potteries, comes from the country of Holland or the Netherlands. The picturesque town of Gouda is in the Southern province at the confluence of the Gouwe and Hollandsche IJssel rivers. Geographically it lies midway between Utrecht and Rotterdam.

There were many factories spread over the Netherlands producing the "Gouda style" of pottery. Most originally started out making clay pipes. The geographical position of the Netherlands gave the clay pipe/pottery factories an advantage when trading. The great North Sea ports on its coast, the River Rhine for the rest of Europe and being across the water from the Thames estuary, easy access to London. Eventually from there across the UK to Liverpool and other UK ports sending goods to the USA and beyond.

Factories such as PZH or Plazuid (Plateelbakkerij Zuid-Holland, 1897-1964), Regina (1898-1979), Ivora (origins back to 1630-1965), Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg in The Hague (1883-1916), Plateelfabriek De Distel in Amsterdam (1895-1922) and Zenith (1749-1984), were well known. They all had their own styles, patterns, decorators and designers. The best designs (and without doubt quality) were produced in what we know as the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Despite the numerous factories, names, designs, styles, quality and prolific output of pottery produced, when we say "Gouda", we encompass all that prodigious variety of pottery and ceramics.

Gouda pottery is a collective term for both glossy and matte glazed pottery. The decoration of Gouda pottery is diverse, depending on the origin and changes over the years. Yet there is to appoint a number of specific and distinctive features:

• Floral to abstract images on floral theme-based forms
• Expressive use of colour based on intense colours and colour contrasts
• Compared to other Art Nouveau relatively solid lines

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