In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the potters in the city of Delft created magnificent sets of small plates, which were assembled surrounding a central star-shaped dish. In literature, these sets are often described as ‘rijsttafel’ or literally ‘rice tables’ sets. However, since Dutch people were still unfamiliar with Indonesian food in the seventeenth century, this denomination probably is not correct.
Dishes of this characteristic shape have been found to be referred to in inventories as ‘confituur-starren’ or ’preserve sets’. Probably they were used to serve sweetmeats, candied or crystallized fruit, and other delicacies such as dried fruit or summer fruit deserved in brandy.
The dishes were usually used during tea time, when sweetmeats were served. In the beginning, drinking tea was a luxurious pastime reserved to an elite, who expressed their desire to show their good taste by acquiring the necessary accoutrements. The most beautiful services could thereby include very delicate sweetmeat dishes. For example, between 1671 and 1691, Wenzel Ferdinand Prince Lobkowicz of Bilnia in Bohemia, ordered a magnificent service set to Lambertus Cleffius, the owner of The Metal Pot factory. Amongst the 125 items that remain today is a complete matching blue and white sweetmeat set with the crowned cipher of the Lobkowicz family.
Only a handful of these complete sets are still known nowadays and we had the good fortune of selling a large set to museum Palace Het Loo, home of William & Mary, several years ago.
This polychrome and gilded petit feu heart-shaped sweetmeat set was produced around 1740. A single identical decorated heart-shaped dish is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A virtually identical set of six heart-shaped dishes is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Негізгі бет Sweetmeat, rice table or preserve sets?
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