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A stork, a sailing boat, a windmill: all classic Delft tile motifs, painted in familiar shades of blue on white. But a skinny-dipping man, or a cat in a kimono? Not quite so typical.
These offbeat, bespoke designs are the work of Poarte, based in Franeker, the Netherlands, which launched last year. They complement its collection of reproduction antique Delft tiles. “We always want to make something that feels very authentically Delft, even if it shows the buyer playing tennis or having a barbecue,” says its director Durk Regts.
The name (pronounced “pwar-ta”) is a Frisian word meaning “gateway”. “I envisioned that the company would be a gateway to the past,” says Regts.
Regts’ father Klass founded the antiques dealership Regts Delft Tiles in 1969. Together, they have some seven decades of expertise in the tin-glazed pottery that we know as the Delft tile (though “Dutch tile” would be more accurate, says Regts, as most were made elsewhere in the Netherlands).
The style was first developed and manufactured in Delft in the 17th century as a response to the European vogue for Chinese blue and white porcelain. Its heyday lasted from around 1640 to 1740 but, even as production dwindled in the early 20th century, the taste for these “charmingly imperfect tiles”, as Regts puts it, has been remarkably consistent.
The expense of antique examples (some 17th-century tiles can reach as much as €300 and into the thousands for collectible display pieces) has fuelled the demand for authentic reproductions, but Regts is disparaging of many on the market: “nothing was quite right”, he asserts, citing the “inappropriate” pairing of corner motifs with central designs as one bugbear.
Not only are Poarte’s replicas cheaper than the originals, they can be used in ways that aren’t recommended for antique tiles, says Regts, such as to line showers.
The company sells both direct and through a growing network of dealers, including Berdoulat and SALON in the UK — to buyers round the globe. In the New Jersey home of Succession actor David Rasche and his wife Heather, for example, a playful scattering of animal scenes from Poarte’s P-1 series is combined with its Colourful Mix (in fact, six shades of white).
Interior designers in the US have also been swift to collaborate: that custom skinny-dipping tile was among several ordered by Meta Coleman for a private client in Spring City, Utah, while Virginia Tupker applied floral and landscape tiles on fireplace surrounds in a home in Southport, Connecticut.
Regts describes Poarte as “a purist’s” endeavour: “We know so much about the originals that the smallest detail being off [in a replica] is disturbing.” Attention to materials and techniques is near-forensic in attaining precisely the right shades of white (the company currently offers 12 hues), the right lightness of touch in the brushwork, and the slight imperfections — pinholes, crazed (cracked) glazes, a subtle wobble — that are the mark of the human hand.
At the pottery in Franeker, the tiles are hand-glazed white and left to dry, then a team of five uses traditional tools to hand-paint the motifs before firing.
Regts believes that following this intensive, time-honoured process means most non-specialists can’t tell the difference between antique originals and replicas. “Ours don’t have the patina of 400-year-old tiles, however, because I don’t want to create that artificially,” he adds. Among his favourites is the P-3 series: 44 replica 18th- and 19th-century floral designs, with the occasional bird or insect thrown in for good measure.
“We come across antique tiles almost weekly with unique designs that we haven’t seen before — it’s a virtually endless database,” he says. “There is just so much we can discover and revive.”
Plain tiles start at €3.50 and decorated tiles at €15 (excluding VAT); lead times range from six weeks for plain tiles to 8–12 weeks for decorated and bespoke tiles; poarte.com
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