At Home in the Seventeenth Century – Ceramics Online Lecture

Femke Dierks, Head of the Decorative Arts Department, the Rijsmuseum, Amsterdam

This lecture will explore the role of Decorative Arts in general and ceramics specifically in the research and planning for the exhibition “At Home in the Seventeenth Century,” which will open at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in October 2025. The exhibition seeks a holistic approach in which objects of different materials are studied in the context in which they were used, for instance, the domestic environment. The exhibition follows a day in a household in the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth century and focuses on all of the domestic activities that took place there: from housekeeping to cooking and eating, and from child-rearing to working.

Femke Diercks is head of Decorative Arts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She is a ceramics specialist and was one of the curators for “Asia in Amsterdam” (an exhibition in 2015/2016 at the Rijksmuseum and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts). She is currently involved in the re-conceptualization of the Rijksmuseum’s permanent installation and the exhibition “At Home in the Seventeenth Century,” for which there will be a published catalogue.

Image: Decorative bowl commemorating a wedding, earthenware, dated 1609. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.