Ceramic Days
10.05.2012
When I have a moment to spare in Gouda I enjoy visiting my local thrift shops; I find it very relaxing and perhaps reassuring walking around looking at a great deal of things I would not like either to purchase or see in my house, not even as gifts from my best intentioned friends and kind acquaintances. Yes, I can then revel at how marvelously lucky I am to have friends with good taste as my eyes linger on a blue and white ashtray from Crete or large wooden pieces of cutlery. Sometimes, depending on the season, I might manage to get to such a store once a week -- when and where I may dump my own unwanted household items. But of course realistically speaking I don’t often come away empty handed.
Once day, when at a second hand store some years back, I happened to admire a small black and white sketch of a winter scene in an old fashioned frame. I decided to purchase the item and while walking to the counter I picked up a small pot. It had a chip near the bottom. The owner of this particular thrift shop was not from Gouda. She sniffed at the strange little pot and then gave me both the pot and the sketch for the price of the picture. I was rather pleased. I had now a little memento of Gouda’s past with “plateel” which is presently holding pens and pencils on the piano. (The sketch hangs over the piano.) On the bottom of the pot is the mark for the date and the maker. It’s not a type of design to the taste of everyone. It’s what one might call a little garish and screams at you from the rollicking 1920’s. Gouda used to make quite a lot of these types of pots among lots of other pots, some more demure. Potteries were a big industry around here and young people would go straight out of school to work in the factories. There’s a very nice website (in Dutch) which tells what it was like to work in the pot business.
In honor of the pottery past of the city Gouda holds a ceramic festival every year. It’s international. This year it’s being held during the 17th and 18th of May. Stands are set up all over the market square for modern artists from near and far. “The Bee’s Tour of Gouda Buzzing Through Vinita’s Lens” will be there too selling our arty and useful guide book. Come by and have a chat with us, we'd love to see you! We’ve even gotten out of the old jail. That’s a joke…the old jail is now the local radio station which was kind enough to ask us in for an interview to talk about our book and showed us the old cell bars.
While the “Keramiek Dagen” (Pottery Festival) is over after two days, there is another art event happening in Gouda which is rather interesting. It started this week. The GoudA Museum has showcased well selected Gouda artists in a “Salon” exposition and is selling the works promising to sell to anyone under 18 a (pre- selected – the museum’s selection I might add) work of art for a mere 25 Euros. So any young person looking to start their art collection has a chance to set a foot in the market. Happy hunting!
Posted by apersephone 21:51 Archived in Netherlands Tagged museumfestivalpotterygoudasalonkeramiekdagen Comments (0)


