Special objects
Experience the beauty
Ceramics Centre Tiendschuur has many special objects in its collection. On this page, we highlight a few objects each time. We apply various criteria: special beauty, innovative technique, surprising design or an intriguing background.
We invite you to uninhibitedly experience their beauty.
Vase Jacques Bongaerts
This vase is a showpiece of Tegelen's ceramic heritage. The vase was made by Jac. Bongaarts. Jac. was born in Tegelen in 1920. At the age of 15, he joined the modelling club Tekavok (Tegelen ceramics and folk art) led by potter-ceramist Joep Felder and painter Jean Flos. This group as a whole was hired in 1936 to work at the art ceramics studio Russel-Tiglia. Director George Goossens asks Jac. to take charge of this studio. During this period, the vase comes into being.
The vase is made of red-firing earthenware clay. For the decoration, Jac. uses various techniques. Most striking is the inlay with three colours of clay, an old traditional technique. Small patterns of black, yellow or white clay are stuck on the red-firing clay before the vase goes into the kiln for the first time.
The images are inspired by stories from the life of Jesus, as recorded in the New Testament. On the top floor, we see the four evangelists to whom the gospel texts are attributed. The first and second floors vividly show scenes from the life of Jesus.
Joan Carillo vase
This unusual blue-red vase with two narrow necks is by Joan Carillo. Joan Carrillo - born in Campillos (Malaga) in 1948 - attends the School of Arts and Crafts in Olot, Catalonia, from 1963 to 1967. In 1968, he works in the Serra brothers' workshop in Barcelona. He then opens his own workshop in Riudaura near Olot (1970). He is a member of the renowned Academia International Ceramic (AIC) in Geneva (Switzerland) and co-founder of the potters' cooperative 'Coure'. In 2008, he participated in the exhibition Gold Fever at the then Pottery Museum De Tiendschuur (Tegelen).
Joan Carillo Romero works using the same technique as Jordi Serra. This technique goes back to the Iraqi and Persian ceramic tradition of the 9th century. By applying extremely thin layers of metal oxides, he creates ceramics with a beautiful metallic sheen in three firing processes.
The museum acquired this object in 2016 from the donation of Pieter Doensen. You can currently find this beautiful object in the museum on the circulation in the main hall.
Lid pot Niek Hoogland
Niek Hoogland is the last Tegelen potter in the tradition brought by the Rhineland potters when they settled in Tegelen in the 17th-18th centuries.
Niek Hoogland was working in the care of the mentally ill when he started the daytime training of the Tegelen Ceramic Learning and Workshop in 1985. Until 1988, he received instruction in the Tegelen/Nederrin pottery tradition from Thei van Rens.
The Tegelen pottery tradition has remained an important source of inspiration for Niek Hoogland. But although his work is grafted onto the traditional sludgeware technique, it developed in a direction all its own with a contemporary signature. Smoothly turned jugs, bowls and dishes and sculptural work acquire their characteristic shape in red-firing clay and are then coated with a white sludge layer with decoration on top. Niek Hoogland decorates his work partly abstract, partly with motifs from his immediate surroundings (e.g. the river Maas) in a lively loose style. "I make my work as has been done in this region for over two centuries. I decorate it with silt and work as directly as possible. I take great pleasure in the act of making. The movements of setting up, of turning and pulling ears, of applying the sludge and decorating. It's like telling stories"
His work is highly regarded internationally. His career as a ceramicist will culminate in a solo exhibition at the Tiendschuur in January 2024.
