Ferdinand

Meet Ferdinand (as in the story of Ferdinand the Bull). A shy one with a big heart, Ferdinand would smell flowers instead of engaging in bullfights.

He is a one-of-a-kind lamp lovingly handcrafted from a vintage, rare, hand-painted Royal Delft (De Porceleyne Fles) vase in Imari or “Pijnacker” (red, blue & gold or rood, blauw en goud) style, paired with a custom contemporary lampshade in a Pompeian red satin, made in an atelier near Amsterdam. The vase base was made in in 1979 and hand-painted by U.R. Kuczinski.

Height: 31 cm (12.2 in) with shade
Width: 22 cm (8.6 in) with shade
E14 fitting

More information:
In the second half of the 17th century, traders first brought Japanese Kakiemon and Imari porcelain to Holland. Inspired by its beautiful colours and patterns, it was copied by a few of the Delft factories beginning in the early 18th century. Some historians attributed the earliest Delftware in Imari colors to Adriaan Pijnacker, thus giving it is colloquial name. De Porceleyne Fles started producing it in 1902.

It is a gorgeous style that was very expensive to produce, since the red and gold paints could not be fired at high temperatures. So, while the blue paint was painted as an underglaze (as was usual with De Porceleyne Fles and other Delftware) and fired at a high temperature, the red and gold needed to be painted as an overglaze after the first glaze firing and the piece then needed to be fired a second time at a lower temperature. This second glaze firing, along with the gold paint that was used, which was made from pure ground 24 karat gold, made it 60-80% more expensive to produce than the normal Delfts Blue models. Because of the high costs, De Porceleyne Fles had to stop making pieces in the Pijnacker style in 2009.