Launch of MuseumDepotShop

9 April 2019

The Singer Museum Laren formed the appropriate backdrop for the launch of the website www.MuseumDepotShop.nl. We were present, as one of the first museums that offered objects for this online shop that aims to sell orphaned items from museum reserves. This tackles a problem that the museums cannot solve themselves: the overflowing depots with items that do not really belong there. Television host Frits Sissing was introduced as an ambassador for this new web shop.

Museum week

8 April 2019

As a successor to the museum weekend, Dutch museums are now in the picture for a whole Museum Week from 8 to 14 April. The theme for the promotion of the museums is "discover our real gold". For that occasion the Amsterdam Pipe Museum shows real gold by means of three Japanese kiserus, recently bought in Tokyo. All these three pipes have a pipe bowl in gold or a massive gold mouthpiece. Items not only made as a status, but also because gold is compared to other metals, for smoking devices important being completely tasteless. Unfortunately, after the museum week these exquisite pipes disappeared again in the reserves, but many lucky visitors had the opportunity to see these during the Museum Week.

Folk art in auction

3 April 2019

Today Auction House De Zwaan in Amsterdam sold a series of tabacological items from the estate of the collector and trader Loed van Bussel, who died last year. As a trader, he did ethnography, but for his personal collection the focus was on tobacco-related objects in carved wood. Some thirty lots with various snuff boxes, some snuff graters and pipe cases were put up for auction. The interest turned out to be overwhelming, especially by foreign telephone bidders. In spite of that, we bought ten objects for our collection, including the finest snuff bottle with three stream gods carved in fine boxwood. Here is another triumph depicted: an early snuff box in the shape of a reclining lion, carved from palm wood. With its age of almost three centuries a beautifully preserved object.