Animal figures – Aronson Antiquairs of Amsterdam | Delftware | Made in Holland

D2653. Pair of Miniature Dogs

femke@aronson.com — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:50:15 +0000

This pair of miniature recumbent dogs belongs to a category of small-scale figural Delftware that gained popularity in the eighteenth century as decorative objects for domestic interiors. Miniatures such as these were intended for intimate settings, displayed on mantelpieces, cabinets, or within vitrines, where their modest scale invited close viewing and personal engagement rather than monumental display.

Miniature animal figures occupied a distinct place within Delftware production. Delft potters increasingly explored reduced formats in the eighteenth century, responding to changing tastes that favored refinement, novelty, and the charm of small objects. These miniatures often depict familiar animals, dogs, cows, sheep, or birds, rendered in relaxed poses that emphasize calmness and domesticity. Their appeal lay not in strict naturalism but in their decorative presence and tactile immediacy.

The present dogs are modeled in a recumbent pose, resting on low, green-painted bases that suggest grassy ground. Their bodies are lightly mottled in manganese-purple tones, a decorative effect frequently employed in Delftware to suggest fur rather than to imitate a specific breed. Details such as the collars, facial features, and subtly indicated musculature are sparingly applied, allowing the overall silhouette to remain clear and legible at a small scale. The paired format, with the figures oriented toward one another, suggests their intended use as pendants, reinforcing symmetry in interior arrangements.

D1639. Pair of Polychrome Milking Groups

Celine — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:35:41 +0000

Note
Gerrit de Graaf was a painter at d’ Oude Prins (The Old Prince) factory, a tile manufactory located on the Anjeliersstraat in Amsterdam. He began working as an apprentice around 1745, and from 1770 onward he possibly managed the painting department. Characteristic of his style were the blue and manganese color scheme and his slightly nervous (kriebelig) execution, identifiable through the several pieces that are known bearing his monogram or his complete signature. Although most of his work was on tiles, he also painted molded objects, such as a tray dated 1779, in the Musée national de Céramique, Sèvres (inv. no. MNC 1931), and a butter tub in the form of a female figure, dated 1770, and illustrated in Van Dam 1999, p. 45, no. 23, which, with both the artist’s monogram and complete signature is a key piece for attributions to Gerrit de Graaf. There are five pairs and a single figure of recumbent cows known and attributed to d’ Oude Prins factory based on the pair in De Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis in Brussels (inv. no. L. 334 a,b), which is signed by Adam Sybel, who, like De Graaf, also was a tile painter at d’ Oude Prins factory. There are no known Amsterdam milking groups. However, in the eighteenth century the tile factories in Amsterdam did produce molded objects on a small scale, so it is possible that this pair of milking groups was indeed the product of d’Oude Prins. Although these groups do show signs of handwork, they clearly were made in a mold based on Delft models. The important differences between the Amsterdam and Delft cows, are in the color palette, and in the body shapes: the Amsterdam cows being more naturalistically modeled than the more stylized Delft cows.

In spite of a strong argument for this pair of milking groups having been produced in Amsterdam, their origin is still uncertain, although it was not likely to be in one of the Delft facrtories. They may have been created in the Blankenburg tile factory in Amsterdam, which was discontinued in 1764, and from whom Pieter van der Kloet, the owner of d’ Oude Prins, may have bought the molds. Alternatively the groups may have been made in the Blankenburg factory and painted there by De Graaf, where he may have learned his skill as a painter before being employed at d’ Oude Prins.

D9003. Blue and White Sweetmeat Dish

Celine — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:22:53 +0000

Note
Sweetmeat dishes were usually used during tea time, when sweetmeats were served.Delights such as sugared orange peels, sugar-coated nuts and seeds, sometimes even colored, pear and quince marmalade and preserved ginger, chestnuts and fennel were presented in these small delicate dishes. In the seventeenth century, the creation of such delicacies were facilitated thanks to the importation of large quantities of sugar from Brazil and Caribbean. Honey got progressively replaced by a more refine sweetener, which enhanced the creation of numerous desserts.

D1607. Pair of Blue and White Fan-Shaped Sweetmeat Dishes

Celine — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:14:42 +0000

Note
Dishes of this shape, when assembled as a set of eight surrounding a central star-shaped dish, traditionally were thought to have been made as ‘rijsttafel’ sets. However, the current thinking is that because they have been found to be referred to in inventories as ‘confituur-starren’ (’preserve sets’), most probably they were used to serve sweetmeats and other delicacies such as dried fruit or summer fruit preserved in brandy. By the seventeenth century, the cultivation of sugarcane in Brazil and the Caribbean made the importation of large quantities of sugar possible, and honey, initially used as the most prevalent sweetener, was replaced by refined cane sugar. The availability of sugar as its sources increased and its price declined throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, caused the general popularity of sugared orange peels, sugar-coated nuts and seeds, sometimes even colored, pear marmalade and preserved ginger, chestnuts and fennel. All of these delights were presented in small dishes such as these, but based on the consistently early dates of surviving sets and their component dishes, made by a number of the major factories, they would appear to have enjoyed an important but somewhat short-lived vogue in Dutch Delftware.

D1536. Pair of Polychrome Figures of Seated Monkeys

Celine — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 14:45:05 +0000

Note

With their high intelligence and their humanlike behavior in which we can recognize our own, monkeys and apes were either loved or hated. In art, from the fourteenth throughout the seventeenth century, monkeys were not so much targets of ridicule themselves, but were used to point out the idiocies of human endeavor. Once established as the rage in France, where its satirical freedom, its insouciance and its playful exoticism were so akin to the court culture, singerie spread rapidly around Europe. However, with few exceptions, it did not have the same fashionable effect in ceramic representations. Even in Holland, where the more jocular population was willing to laugh at its own foibles, the most popular figures produced at the Delft factories were more representative of familiar daily life than of élitist pursuits, a theme underlying singerie. This is what makes the present figures so rare and unusual, establishing them as one of the very few examples of singerie in Delftware.

Condition

One with a repair to base leg
One with a repair to tip of foot, hand and pipe

D1960. Pair of Polychrome Models of Recumbent Cows

Celine — Mon, 04 May 2020 14:17:38 +0000

Note
The Delft potters were inspired by a seventeenth-century tradition. Each year the Butcher’s guild in Holland would hold a parade on the day of its patron saint (St. Luke, symbolized by the apocalyptic winged ox). The parade celebrated the guild’s best-bred bull or cow. The prized beast was decorated with floral garlands and ribbons, and gilded horns that were often topped with oranges. The festive, bannered procession was led by drummers and pipers, followed by a singing and dancing chorus of guild members and townspeople. The animal would later be butchered and the meat served at the guild dinner, a portion of it being donated to the church and the local poor. From this tradition emerged the saying, ‘The guild ox is on parade’, which became synonymous with ‘this is a real feast!’

Provenance
Aronson Antiquairs, Amsterdam, 2003
Dutch Private Collection

Condition

Ears and horns restored

D2053. Pair of White Delft Milking Groups

Celine — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 07:56:14 +0000

Note
Faience with an undecorated white tin glaze was first produced in Italy around 1550. Primarily dishes and other large vessels, the ilk became known as ‘bianchi di Faenza’, and eventually simple objects such as plates, jugs or bowls, were made in serial production to serve as affordable utilitarian wares. It is likely that from the late sixteenth century onwards, the Delft potters produced white tin-glazed wares after the Italian prototypes.

Research and discussions continue as to whether many of the white-glazed and unpainted groups, such as the present pair of cows with milkers, were cold-painted after their production, perhaps outside of the factory, and that this unfired and thus relatively perishable form of decoration might either have worn off or have been removed intentionally for aesthetic reasons at a later date (see D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer Delft. Niederländische Fayence 1984, p. 80; and D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Wit Delfts 1970). On the other hand, it can be assumed that white-glazed, unpainted objects were produced specifically as more affordable alternatives to the more labor intensive, and thus more costly, decorated examples.

For a more recent comprehensive study on white Delftware, see Barbara Verspuij, “Wit Delfts Aardewerk”, 2 volumes, unpublished MA-thesis, Leiden (Leiden University) 2008, who includes a discussion of the various models of cows in white Delftware, vol. 2, pp. 573-605.

Provenance
Probably J.F.H.H. Beekhuizen, Amsterdam

Condition

Usual rim frittings but overall good condition

D1964. Pair of Polychrome Cold-Painted Milking Groups

Celine — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 15:45:16 +0000

Note
The range of colors seen on eighteenth-century Delftware were achieved through various techniques, using skills honed throughout many years. Not every paint color could be realized in a single firing process, and there were often several rounds in the kiln. Ceramics painted with grand feu colors of blue, green, and yellow were fired at a high temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius (1800 degrees Fahrenheit). The limited color scheme of the grand feu colors could be enlarged by applying petit feu colors: soft colored enamels and gold, fired at approximately 600 degrees Celsius (1100 degrees Fahrenheit) during a second firing. The painted objects were very colorful and delicate, however the additional firing made them expensive to produce and sell.

Another technique was the cold painted decoration, as can be seen on this pair of milking groups. Unlike the lengthy and expensive process of the grand feu and petit feu colors, the cold painted wares were not fired after they were painted and therefore more economical. Several factories tried this technique, but the new method was met with resistance. The cold painted process required less work for the factory painters because the painting was executed by “kladschilders,” artists working with oil-paint. It is extremely rare to find a pair of milking groups like the present pair that are completely decorated in the cold paint technique. Their rarity can partly be explained because of the popularity of white Delftware at the beginning of the twentieth century, whose scarce fragments of cold painted decorated were removed.

Condition

Tips of horns and two ears repaired
Cold paint consolidated

D1343. Pair of Polychrome Figures of Horses

Celine — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 15:10:02 +0000

Delft, circa 1765 One marked with an axe in iron-red for De Porceleyne Byl (The Porcelain Axe) factory Each with a white head, a brown hide, blue eyes, nostrils and hooves, and a manganese-delineated mane and tail, wearing a blue saddle over an iron-red-fringed yellow saddle blanket, and standing foursquare on the green top of a chamfered rectangular base marbleized in yellow and iron-red around the canted edges. Heights 16.3 cm. (6.4 in.)

D1959. Pair of Polychrome Models of Recumbent Cows

Celine — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 15:01:43 +0000

Delft, circa 1775 Each with yellow horns, manganese eyes and a manganese-striated hide, and modeled affronté, lying on the green grassy surface of a manganese-edged and conformingly-shaped low mound base. Heights 10.8 cm. (4.2 in.) Lengths 14.4 cm. (5.7 in.)