Again thousands further!

22 July 2023

It has been quite some time since we reported a milestone in our photo collection on the web. In July 2020, the counter was still at 170,000 unique images. This week we passed the number of 185,000 different photos. This equates to an average of five thousand new additions per year. A wonderful score that fits in a time of ongoing digitization. Each object with multiple photos, including close-ups, altogether a special result. Will the collection be perfectly registered at 200,000 photos? We assume that, but for now... just keep on working.

Biemans Collection

16 July 2023

The Netherlands has many more pipe collections than we think. As an example, we recently came across the collection of Bert Biemans from Beek en Donk in Brabant. This omnivore collected pipes from all over the world and set up a museum behind his house where the pipes stood and hung criss-cross together, next to an extensive collection of elephants. But Biemans passed away and the family looked for a new home. This is how part of the collection ended up in our museum. There it complements the category of curious European folkloric pipes available in the 1970s to 1990s, in our museum a collection field somewhat neglected.

New handbook

5 July 2023

Curator Don Duco has been working on the design of his long-awaited handbook on the Dutch clay pipe since January this year. The predecessor of that book was awarded in 1988 by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. A new edition should have been published a long time ago, but it never happened. The text has now been updated and the first chapters are laid out. The layout, in particular, turns out to be a painstaking job, it still requires all the attention for a few months to come. We'll see when it's on the market. Long awaited, it seems to be coming soon!

Slavery Memorial

1 July 2023

Tobacco as a commodity has been associated with the Blackamoor or Moriaan in Dutch for centuries. Today we commemorate and celebrate the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. At least for the Netherlands, other countries were years ahead of us, some  even behind. Our collection also contains numerous objects depicting the plantation slave. This image was very common on tobacco packaging, but also as an shop front statue as shown here. In previous centuries every passer-by knew when he saw such a black boy above the shop door, that it was a tobacco shop. Today we wouldn't do that anymore. These and other examples are still visible in our museum as a reminder of other times.