La Chambre Des Reines

Rozenburg Eggshell Porcelain Slide show  (takes time to load)

I chose Satie's 5th Gnossienne (music) because it was composed in the same period the Rozenburg porcelain was made (1883 – 1916) and I love Rozenburg because it reminds me of the late 19th and early 20th century The Hague. 

Rozenburg was manufactured in The Hague, the Dutch seat of the government, with embassies and diplomats from foreign countries and also the residence of our kings and queens.

Rozenburg and Satie, remind me of the youth of my mother in The Hague, with balls and French magazines and boutiques with silk "robes" and large rooms with lace curtains. 

With servants and nannies, silver cutlery and porcelain crockery, with afternoon teas in the garden under a purple lilac tree, in summer, with soft piano music in the background.

With trips to Italy and shopping in Paris and reading “Madame Bovary” and waiting for a man of standing to ask for your hand.......

......then the Second World War made a brutal end to that era.

(Elenor)

 

**Rozenburg Eggshell Porcelain** The 1900 world exhibition in Paris introduced the public to the translucent, wafer-thin 'eggshell' porcelain newly developed by the Rozenburg pottery in The Hague. The new product was so succesful that stocks sold out almost immediately. The design of the creamy white porcelain was based on an ingenious interplay of lines, perfectly complemented by the delicate decorative schemes. 

The motifs used, derive from the plant and animal world and are reminiscent both of Japanese prints and of the French and Belgian Art Nouveau style. Eggshell porcelain continued to be manufactured through to 1914 - the year in which the factory ceased production - and brought the Rozenburg pottery a huge reputation both in the Netherlands and abroad. Today it's a world wide collectors item.

 

Pictures: Proportio Divino, Arnhem, Netherlands
Source : Municipal Museum, The Hague, Netherlands

Mp3 : Eric Satie, Gnossienne No5
Piano: Klara Körmendi

 

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