TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

It is almost spring! But it is still cold in the Netherlands... So I have some pictures here taken last year during spring in Delft, approximately 11 months ago in April of 2017. A very spring look =) The Oostpoort (Eastern Gate) of the city. The city played a major role during the Dutch Golden Age (17th century). I have been to Delft a few times before and I went here last year in spring because a friend of mine visiting the Netherlands, Bubbles, wanted to specifically see the city. She has heard about the place and was very curious. It was very timely as well that I had a (career-related) meeting in Delft so we managed to plan our visit around the meeting, wherein after my appointment in the morning, we went straight to Delft and spent the rest of the day there. Sometimes things just fall in the right place without having to push it. This entry will be centered more on pictures with notes on them. I did manage to write a few blog posts about our visit to Delf...

If you are going to imitate something, then you better do it well. Or perhaps, better? That’s the story in a nutshell with Royal Delft in the Netherlands, the porcelain company (Koninklijke Porceleyne Fles) with roots going back to the second half of the 16th century. The Royal Delft Museum and Factory for the 'Royal Delft Experience' tour. The Dutch weren’t the inventors of blue pottery. They learned this skill from Italian potters and copied Chinese-style porcelain brought back by Dutch seamen from the Far East through the Dutch East India Company (VOC – Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), which by the way is the first publicly traded company in the world. If there is another thing than trade that the Dutch did was good, that would have to be being master imitators of porcelain ware. Demand for blue porcelain skyrocketed and before long enough business was doing very well that the company made investments of more than 32 factories in Delft and a number in Amster...