A
copper pan for small pancakes, a copper kettle, two copper pots, a
copper milk pan, four iron pots
'Een kopere broederspanne [poffertjespan]; een kopere
ketel; twee kopere potten; een kopere melckpan; vier ysere
potten'. All of these were in the back kitchen, the agter
keukentgen, room J.
Copper cooking utensils were the expensive alternative to earthenware and iron cooking pots. They required constant scouring.
The traveller Ellis Veryard noted in 1701: "No people in Europe are so neat in their house; the meaner sort being extremely nice in setting them out to the best advantage. The women spend the greatest part of their time in washing, rubbing and scouring, that their pots and pans are kept brighter without than within. The floors of their lower rooms are commonly chequered black and white marble [sic!] and the walls and chimneys covered with a kind of painted tiles; their upper rooms are often washed and sprinkled with sand, to hinder any moisture from staining the boards. You had almost as good spit in a Dutch woman's face as her floor, and therefore there are little pots or pans to spit in." (Lit: C. Datema, 'British Travellers in Holland during the Stuart period. Edward Browne and John Locke as tourists in the United Provinces'. Thesis, Vrije Universiteit, 1989, p. 155.)
Note : This object was part of the Vermeer-inventory as listed by the clerk working for Delft notary public J. van Veen. He made this list on February 29, 1676, in the Thins/Vermeer home located on Oude Langendijk on the corner of Molenpoort. The painter Johannes Vermeer had died there at the end of December 1675. His widow Catherina and their eleven children still lived there with her mother Maria Thins.
The transcription of the 1676 inventory, now in the Delft archives, is based upon its first full publication by A.J.J.M. van Peer, "Drie collecties..." in Oud Holland 1957, pp. 98-103. My additions and explanations are added within square brackets [__]. Dutch terms have been checked against the world's largest language dictionary, the Dictionary of the Dutch Language (Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal , or WNT), which was begun by De Vries en Te Winkel in 1882.
Illustration taken from the recently published handbook on Dutch Doll Houses by Jet Pijzel-Dommisse,Het Hollandse pronkpoppenhuis, Interieur en huishouden in de 17de en 18de eeuw, Waanders, Zwolle; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, ill. 174.
This page forms part of a large encyclopedic site on Vermeer and Delft. Research by Drs. Kees Kaldenbach (email). A full presentation is on view at johannesvermeer.info.
Launched December, 2002; Last update March 2, 2017.
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