Blue and white Delft is one of the most familiar sights in a country house. Plates line the shelves of dressers, tiles frame old fireplaces, and on windowsills and mantels stand the most curious and beautiful pieces of all: tulip vases, with a spout for every stem. Their story takes in Chinese porcelain, Dutch merchants, a financial mania over flowers and a royal couple who brought a taste for blue and white to England.
The lure of Chinese porcelain
In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company began shipping Chinese porcelain to Europe in large quantities. The thin, white, translucent porcelain, painted in deep cobalt blue, caused a sensation. Nobody in Europe yet knew how to make true porcelain, and the imported pieces were expensive and highly prized.
European potters set about imitating it. They could not reproduce porcelain itself, but they could make something that looked remarkably similar.
Tin-glazed earthenware
The solution was tin-glazed earthenware. Potters shaped pieces from ordinary clay, fired them, then coated them in a glaze containing tin oxide, which turned opaque and brilliant white in the kiln. On this white surface, painters decorated designs in cobalt blue before a second firing fixed the colours. The result looked very like Chinese porcelain from a distance, at a fraction of the price.
The technique was already known in Italy, where it was called maiolica, and in Spain. But it was in the Dutch city of Delft that it reached its height.
The rise of Delft
By the middle of the seventeenth century, Delft was home to dozens of potteries, many housed in former breweries. A turning point came when civil war and the fall of the Ming dynasty in China disrupted the supply of porcelain to Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. Dutch buyers turned to their own potters instead, and Delft flourished.
Delft painters copied Chinese scenes at first, but soon developed their own designs: Dutch landscapes, windmills, ships, biblical scenes, flowers and birds. One pottery founded in 1653, De Porceleyne Fles, still operates in the city today as Royal Delft.
Tulip mania
To understand the tulip vase, you need to understand the Dutch passion for tulips. Tulips arrived in the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire in the late sixteenth century and quickly became a status symbol. The most prized were "broken" tulips, with dramatic streaks and flames of colour, now known to have been caused by a virus.
In the 1630s, the trade in bulbs turned into a speculative frenzy. Prices for the rarest varieties rose to extraordinary levels, before collapsing suddenly in early 1637. "Tulip mania" is still cited as one of the first recorded speculative bubbles. The passion for tulips themselves, however, never faded.
The tulipière
Later in the seventeenth century, Delft potters began making flower vases designed to show off cut flowers, especially tulips, to best advantage. Instead of a single opening, these vases had a series of spouts or nozzles, so that each stem could be displayed individually. Some were modest, with five or so spouts in a fan or a row. Others were spectacular: tiered pyramids several feet high, built from stacked sections, each with its own spouts and water reservoir.
These vases are often called tulipières, from the French, or flower pyramids. They were luxury objects, made for the grandest houses.
Delft comes to England
In 1689, the Dutch prince William of Orange and his wife Mary came to the English throne as William III and Mary II. They brought Dutch tastes with them, and Mary was a passionate collector of Delftware and Chinese porcelain. She ordered elaborate flower vases for the royal palaces, including Hampton Court, and her enthusiasm made blue and white fashionable among the English aristocracy.
Country houses across England filled with Delft. At Dyrham Park, near Bath, on the southern edge of the Cotswolds, a remarkable pair of Delft flower pyramids collected at the end of the seventeenth century can still be seen.
English delftware
Tin-glazed earthenware was already being made in England, and demand for the Dutch style gave it a boost. Potteries in London, especially around Lambeth and Southwark, in Bristol and in Liverpool produced their own blue and white wares, often decorated with English scenes, inscriptions and dates. Collectors call these English delftware, with a lower-case d.
The arrival of cheaper, more durable creamware and porcelain in the eighteenth century eventually brought the delftware industry to an end, but the look never disappeared.
How to recognise tin-glazed earthenware
- Look at a chip. Where the glaze is chipped, especially on rims, you will see soft, buff or pinkish earthenware underneath, rather than the hard white body of porcelain.
- Hold it to the light. Porcelain is often slightly translucent; earthenware is not.
- Feel the weight. Delftware is usually thicker and heavier than porcelain of a similar size.
- Look at the glaze. Tin glaze has a soft, slightly uneven surface, sometimes with tiny pinholes.
How to fill a tulip vase
A spouted vase is a joy to use, because it needs so few flowers. A handful of stems, one per spout, looks complete, and each flower is seen on its own.
- Spring: tulips, of course. Let them bend and twist towards the light as they grow, which they will continue to do in the vase. Also daffodils, narcissi, fritillaries and hyacinths.
- Summer: sweet peas, cornflowers, single garden roses, cosmos and scabious.
- Autumn: rosehips, seedheads, late cosmos, single dahlias, Japanese anemones and a few turning leaves.
- Winter: sprigs of holly, ivy, rosemary or evergreen, snowdrops and hellebores in late winter.
Cut stems at an angle, strip any leaves that would sit below the water, and top up the water every day or two.
Styling Delft
Blue and white works almost anywhere, but it looks its best against natural textures: oak and pine, rattan, linen, whitewashed walls and brass. A single tulip vase is lovely in the centre of a dining table, at one end of a mantel or on a windowsill where the light comes through the flowers.
Our Delft Tulipière Rectangle Vase is hand-painted in cobalt on cream, inspired by the earthenware of seventeenth-century Delft.
Caring for Delft-style ceramics
- Wash by hand in warm, soapy water. Avoid the dishwasher.
- Avoid sudden changes of temperature, such as boiling water into a cold vase.
- Empty and dry flower vases between uses, so water doesn't sit in them for weeks.
- Follow the maker's guidance on holding water, particularly with older or crazed pieces.
- Stand vases on a mat on polished wood, in case of condensation.
Frequently asked questions
What is a tulipière?
A flower vase with several spouts, designed so that individual stems, especially tulips, can be displayed separately.
Is Delftware porcelain?
No. Traditional Delftware is tin-glazed earthenware, made to imitate Chinese porcelain.
Why is Delft blue and white?
Because it was imitating the blue and white Chinese porcelain that was so fashionable in Europe in the seventeenth century, and cobalt blue was one of the few colours that survived high firing well.
For more on the stories behind classic designs, read William Morris and the story of Strawberry Thief.