Tobacco Frieze. Kalverstraat 190/Heiligeweg 1 and Suriname; Tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
So how do we know the handsome frieze adorning the bottom of the first storey of this building depicts the cultivation, shipping and manufacturing of tobacco from Suriname? Well, the now empty niche originally had a statuette of a woman from Suriname and that to me indicates that the carvings depict the production and manufacture of tobacco from Suriname. What happened to that sculpture, I don't know.
The friezes are flanked left and right by so-called Green Men, male faces with leaf motifs. The left frieze (top inset) shows tobacco growers and pickers; then the carting off of the precious leaves to be shipped overseas. The shipment is eagerly awaited by those puttos spying the ship by telescope, the tobacco bales are unladen. The right frieze (bottom inset) shows the unpacking of the crates and barrels, the drying of the tobacco and then its manufacture presumably into cigarettes (there's a faint inscription on the far upper right: Cigarettes Ducke, although the building was commissioned by G.H. de Veer whose company made cigars) as the puttos are smoking.
The entire scene appears to have been designed by the sculpting studio established in 1883 by Pierre Elysée (Emil) Van den Bossche (1849-1921) and Willem Hubert Crevels (1855-1916). They're notable for designing parts of the so-called Gold State Coach used by the King for the annual ride to address Parliament in The Hague. There has recently been some clamor with regard to the racism of the depictions on the coach of colonial slavery.
The building itself was designed in 1891 by the Amsterdam architect Gerrit A. van Arkel (1858-1918); G.A. Zeeman is responsible for the same-styled building edging just at the right. After 1894 Van Arkel abandoned this neo-gothic/neo-renaissance style for Art Deco and Jugendstil. The edifice was built for a tobacco factory and adjoining tobacconist on the ground floor.
On the right is a photo of Tobacco flowering - even in the rain this morning - in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam (see also my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/22836771431/in/photoli...).
PS [2017.vii25] I searched around a bit, intrigued by the now missing statuette which has been described as a Javanese woman. I found a good b&w photo in De Architect, journal of Architectura et Amicitia, 3 (1893), and have pasted it as an inset, lower right. Clearly not Javanese, I think, but from Suriname. Why it was removed, I don't know. Perhaps it was considered too erotic for public space or racist.
Tobacco Frieze. Kalverstraat 190/Heiligeweg 1 and Suriname; Tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
So how do we know the handsome frieze adorning the bottom of the first storey of this building depicts the cultivation, shipping and manufacturing of tobacco from Suriname? Well, the now empty niche originally had a statuette of a woman from Suriname and that to me indicates that the carvings depict the production and manufacture of tobacco from Suriname. What happened to that sculpture, I don't know.
The friezes are flanked left and right by so-called Green Men, male faces with leaf motifs. The left frieze (top inset) shows tobacco growers and pickers; then the carting off of the precious leaves to be shipped overseas. The shipment is eagerly awaited by those puttos spying the ship by telescope, the tobacco bales are unladen. The right frieze (bottom inset) shows the unpacking of the crates and barrels, the drying of the tobacco and then its manufacture presumably into cigarettes (there's a faint inscription on the far upper right: Cigarettes Ducke, although the building was commissioned by G.H. de Veer whose company made cigars) as the puttos are smoking.
The entire scene appears to have been designed by the sculpting studio established in 1883 by Pierre Elysée (Emil) Van den Bossche (1849-1921) and Willem Hubert Crevels (1855-1916). They're notable for designing parts of the so-called Gold State Coach used by the King for the annual ride to address Parliament in The Hague. There has recently been some clamor with regard to the racism of the depictions on the coach of colonial slavery.
The building itself was designed in 1891 by the Amsterdam architect Gerrit A. van Arkel (1858-1918); G.A. Zeeman is responsible for the same-styled building edging just at the right. After 1894 Van Arkel abandoned this neo-gothic/neo-renaissance style for Art Deco and Jugendstil. The edifice was built for a tobacco factory and adjoining tobacconist on the ground floor.
On the right is a photo of Tobacco flowering - even in the rain this morning - in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam (see also my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/22836771431/in/photoli...).
PS [2017.vii25] I searched around a bit, intrigued by the now missing statuette which has been described as a Javanese woman. I found a good b&w photo in De Architect, journal of Architectura et Amicitia, 3 (1893), and have pasted it as an inset, lower right. Clearly not Javanese, I think, but from Suriname. Why it was removed, I don't know. Perhaps it was considered too erotic for public space or racist.