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Delft blue

Extensive buildings were important for the industry since the production were very complicated and every step required lots of space and personnel. The center of the production was the large workshop where all delftware shapes were made, painted and fired in the kiln. Spaces for drying the delftware, warehouses, sheds for fire wood and hay attics. A store where the customer could choose from the finished selection was also needed.

A large number of specialists were required to manage all these steps, and it was of extreme importance that they all finished on time so that the working process could run smooth like a clockwork.

The personnel of the earth washeries (aardewasserij) did not work at the factories, but they handled the first part of the process. They prepared the clay formula, the right mixture achieved through long experience, from four kinds of earth. Marl from the region of Doornik / Tournai in Brabant, Flanders. Earth from Mulheim ar the Ruhr river in Germany. The third and fourth kinds were 'black earth' and 'Delft earth'.
The earth was transported to the seventeen earth washeries along the banks of the Rotterdam canal or Schie. These are shown on the Delft paintor Vermeer 'View of Delft'. It was already mixed and washed when it was fed through brass sieves and dried of turning to a thick paste. The paste, cosisting of quartz, clay and feldspar was transported to the workshops.

In the workshops the earth mixer (aardetrappers) started with kneading the earth paste with their bare feet and removing any lumps. The potters (draaiers) took the clay on the pottery wheel, centered it and made the requested amount of objects for mass production. The potters belonged to one of three groups; round potters (rondraaiers), flat potters (platdraaiers) or large potters (grootdraaiers), which made large hollow shaped objects, for example vases.

After the potters, some objects, like sets of jugs and bowls, came to the shaper (vormers) for a more intricate shape. The givers (gevers) dunked the delftware in tin glaze liquid and they were sat out on a rack to dry. This filled all of the pores of the clay and gave the item a fine basic layer.

When the object was dry, the paintors (schilders) marked circles on plates and saucers with a profiling wheel. This was because of the mass production, decorations in free hand designs were not profitable. A drawing was made on a sheet of paper or cardboard and this drawing was punched along the main lines. The perforated image was called pricked stencil/transfer or in Dutch pons/spons. It was used over and over again on the object. A sponge or bag with charcoal powder was used to lightly dab on top of the paper. The paintors followed these black dots with their paintbrushes and because of the high temperature while burning the object, the charcoal evaporated.

The blue colour came from calcining cobalt ore with quartz sand and potash and it was very expensive. Other colours that were used was purple (from manganese dioxide), green (from copper oxide, azurite or malachite) and yellow (from arsenic oxide and mixtures of tin and lead oxides). All these colours were made in the paint grinding windmills (verfmaal-windmolens).

After the paint the items where covered in a thin layer of transparent lead glaze by floor workers (vloerwerkers). Under guidance of the master of the workshop, either the owner or a manager, they also chopped wood needed for heating the kiln. Wood choppers (houtklovers) also did that and selected the right fire wood and chopped it to the desired size

The object was passed through to the container makers (kokermakers). They chose containers of right size for the first kiln process, the biscuit firing. A good size was 24 cm in height and had a diameter of 23-25 cm. They filled the container with a pre-fired plate at the bottom and on top for good shaping. In between they put the newly formed and dried plates, stacked from bottom to top.
The process of firing painted plates were difficult because you had to avoid damaging the glazing. The plates were therefore stacked in layers, each plate resting on three prongs at equal height. The prongs left three small dot traces at the bottom of each object.
Up to nine or eleven containers were piled on top of each other and the kiln were always filled in the most economic way. The measurement of the kiln usually was about 2,5 meters and the firing temperature were at 1000(C or 1800(F. Due to the threat of overproduction , there were limits on how much the annual production of each kiln should be.
This whole production was managed by the Delftware master (meester-plateelbakker). A high amount of money was also put into the industry. There was a large time span between producing the Delftware and getting payment for the piece, it could take months and sometimes even years.