29 mei t/m 31 juli 2011
Museum Het Prinsenhof besteedt deze zomer op een verrassende manier aandacht aan een van Delfts belangrijkste iconen, Delfts Blauw. In de hele tentoonstelling 'Delfts Blauw Verbeeld' is echter geen scherf aardewerk te vinden, slechts textiel en schilderijen.
This Summer, Museum Het Prinsenhof is paying attention to one of Delft's most important icons: Delftware (blue and white pottery). However, surprisingly, this temporary exposition entitled 'Delfts Blauw Verbeeld' (Delftware Depicted), does not exhibit any pottery. Only paintings and textiles can be found.
The Blue secret
Six years ago, Sonja ter Heijden enthusiastically started painting as an autodidact. For as long as she can remember, Sonja has been inspired by what she herself calls “The Blue Secret”. Blue Delftware and blue Chinese porcelain have always captivated Sonja, as does her native city Delft and 17th Century Dutch painting. She can’t imagine her paintings without an element of blue Delftware. For her, East and West, blue for sky and clay for earth become integrated through craftsmanship. Sonja prefers to paint on masonite, which is coated three times with pink primer and after each drying is scoured with water. This results in an exceptionally smooth background for her preliminary drawing. After painting over the drawing in oil, it is again scoured before being worked out in detail.
The Delft Blue Quilts
It took 150 women from a variety of backgrounds twenty weeks to make nine Delft Blue Quilts. At eight locations they had shared experiences of laughter, happiness and sadness while working on their “own patch”. With Delft blue as starting point they further had total creative freedom. These 550 cloth squares were then joined together into nine “friendship-quilts”. Corine Post took care of the design and the Delft women’s cooperative workshop, ‘Stichting Atelier Delftse Vrouwen’ realised their manufacture. Their aim: to stimulate women’s integration and participation via collectively made textile art.
The central representations and corners have been painted by participants from a Delft disability trust ‘Ipse De Ruimte’, and transformed into Delft blue patchwork. Much gratitude to the funds, ‘Fonds 1818, het Oranje Fonds, het VSB fonds’ and the Municipality of Delft for their financial support; also, for the assistance of community centres and day-activity centre ’dagbesteding DWO’, as well as the efforts of many others.
