Sunday, March 6, 2011

Dutch Tile

Royal Tichelaar Makkum is the oldest continuously operating company in the Netherlands, still making painted ceramic tile after more than 400 years on the same site – although it seems they started out manufacturing more bricks than anything else back in the days when the Netherlands still belonged to Spain and when blue-and-white was only beginning to be a sort of Dutch national religion. There are hundreds of available designs in the on-line store. I had a hard time picking only a few to show here. The ones with lettering (below) are custom-made to mark special occasions, like births or retirements.