A few months ago Thinkie and I went to Leeuwarden. A city in the far north of the Netherlands. And though she still does not like tea, we went there for tea.
Our train at Leeuwarden station
(Note: This post is extremely photo heavy, so loading might take a while)
Leeuwarden station
Leeuwarden
After a short detour we arrived at our first destination: “De wereld van thee“. There are actually 2 connected shops here. One specialized in tea and one in that other drink.
“De wereld van thee” teashop
It is a nice shop. Their selection (220 loose leaf teas) is larger and differs somewhat from what other standard teashops in the Netherlands have to offer, but is of the same standard level. Which is far from bad, sometimes quite good, but there is a cutoff before it gets really interesting. I bought a tea tin and a ‘China Black sencha’. A type of tea I have not tried before. The information on the package is quite good compared to other shops. It even contains the name of the plantation the tea comes from. Something that not much standard shops do (sometimes even hard to read the name of the tea they wrote on the package). So all in all quite a nice shop to visit.
Along our road to our next and most important destination we passed 2 shops that could also be considered tea shops though the focus lies more on coffee.
Kaldi. It was the week before Sinterklaas and there was some Dickens like show going on in this nice old street (kleine kerkstraat)
Finally we arrived at our most important destination: The Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics (Keramiekmuseum Princessehof).
Now we all know that ceramics and tea are a great combination, but there was something even better going on.
“Op de thee” (tea visit)
Indeed, an exhibition about tea.
I will start with “some” photo’s to make you drool. And then I will tell you what I think of it.
Teapot tower in the main hall of the museum
Dinner room of the 18th century princess Maria Louise van Hessen-Kassel that gave the museum its name. Set for tea.
Series of china plates depicting all stages of tea production
1760-1770, England, Staffordshire
1774-1778, Oud-Loosdrecht (NL)
Tea tasting
Nice porcelain. 1755-1762
China
China Yixing teapots. Just a few…
Chinese teacups
Japan
Japanese teaware
And of course a Japanese Chanoyu tearoom
Competition
There was a competition for school kids to design their own teapot
17th and 18th century the Netherlands
Teaware in tea for save and weighted transportation
Teaware de commande
Red stone teapots (Germany)
European porcelain
Closeup European porcelain
Delftware
Delftware
“Theekoepel” on the river Vecht (?)
Overview
20th and 21th century the Netherlands
Modern design teapots
Tea set
Skull teapot
Nice wall decoration
Commercials for tea
Cute animal teapots
More modern teapots
The exhibition was quite nice. It showed a lot of tea ceramics. There should always be an exhibition like this within travel distance. But there were some minor points. First of all I missed the story. The exhibition was divided in regions and the most important aspects of tea history were mentioned but in several cases the visitor was left clueless. For example what is Yixing. Why is is so important that we see a hundred of Yixing teapots. It missed the connection between the looses things that were told. There also was no exhibition catalogue and no tea books that could fill these void. But it could just be me. Furthermore: Dutch only…
Restaurant
Before we went to the regular exhibition we had a drink. And the restaurant was a little bit in style.
Teapots on display in the restaurant
Princessehof tea (Ceylon with gojifruit, saffron and cornflower)
Rest of the museum
In the standard exhibition there was some tea too. And f course a lot f other things…
Workshop Jan van der Vaart (important 20th century Dutch ceramist)
China
Some old (Tang dynasty) Chinese China
The Chinese ceramics room
More old (Tang?) Chinese china
Islamic
Islamic porcelain
Magic
Martavanen magical pots
A lot
Looxma Ypeij kabinet
Chinese and Japanese porcelain for the Netherlands, 17th century
Famille Verte
Yixing pots besides some porcelain found in a shipwreck (unclear whether the Yixing was part of that salvage)
Yixing teapot
Chine de commande
Chine de commande
Yixing pots
More Yixing
And more
Japanese porcelain
Japanese Porcelain
Japanese Porcelain
Matcha bowl
Teapot
There was also some Thai and Vietnamese porcelain.
Asian depot
Asian depot
China in the Asian depot
Large teapot to put money in for the tea
Yixing
Modern ceramics in the collected friends exhibition
The Society of Friends of the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics collects the finest modern and contemporary ceramics. This exhibitions shows a selection from that collection.
A kiss
Modern pottery
Viscera
- The exhibition “Op de thee” can still be visited till May 31 2015 in the The Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics (Keramiekmuseum Princessehof)
- NOTE:The exhibition has been extended till July 5 2015
Photo size. My previous site-theme had less space for large photo’s. So now I use larger photo’s on my blog. Perhaps too large? Should I make them smaller next time? Let me know.
I like the large photos better and for me they are no problem to load. Don’t know how loading is for others though. But there are so many gorgeous pics I would have been tempted to split them into two, or even three posts. Before museum, exhibition, rest of the museum? Scrolling up and down through the post would be easier. That way the reader doesn’t see a “mass of pictures” but can focus more intensely on a smaller number. That would make commenting on some easier too. Anyway, maybe someone else “sees it” differently? The pictures are stunning, love them! I will be back soon with comments about what you wrote.
No problem here, but then again, I’m visiting from my laptop, not sure what this does to smartphones. Jackie’s suggestion for splitting something like this into multiple blog posts might be a good idea if this is something you worry about, that way you limit the amount of photo’s without having to limit your selection even further.
Too bad we missed the exhibition on hot chocolate 😉
Darn, forgot that one.
Shame on you @bram.
Really nice to see so many teapots and tea stuff.
I really need to have some of these commercials 😛
And I think there might be a mistake in the text below one of the pictures.
How come one time it is a red stone (Germany) and another a Yixing?
Yeah, shame on me 🙂
Once Yixing was imported European factories tries to duplicate it. So there were some German factories that managed to create red stone tea ware (and other stuff). It is usually heavier and less refined an does not have the special properties that make Yixing tea ware so special.
If you want to know more you might want to look for Böttgersteinzeug.
More worried about the size of the pictures on screen 🙂 Height and width 🙂
Oh well, some (hot) chocolate might help us get over that 😉
Size looks fine on my laptop and Roeland’s, I bet even somewhat smallish on a large pc-screen like Maarten’s.
many of your photos show overviews of several items, having smaller photo’s might make it hard to see those in detail.
Due to being a huge success the exhibition has been extended till July 5 2015.
On average people give the exhibition an 8,2 (out of 10). And since its start in September there were about 4 times the normal number of visitors to the museum. (~23000 instead of ~6000)
See here (in Dutch)