Yesterday's post focused on inspiration, training one's eyes to beauty and majolica tiles being incorporated in fashion designs.
Let's continue the thread today by looking at finding inspirations without moving from your computer and start from the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics.
Based in an 18th century palace that once belonged to Maria Louise van Hessen-Kassel, Princess of Orange-Nassau in the historical centre of Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, the museum offers visitors the chance to see a vast collection of ceramics comprising around 35,000 objects and including superb art nouveau and elegant Chinese porcelain pieces, as well as work by artists such as Picasso.
If you can't visit the museum in person, you can still check its archive online, search the collections and even store object details if you register and log in.
Among the future highlights scheduled at the Princessehof there is the exhibition "Time for Tea" (from 6 September 2014 to 31 May 2015).
The event will transport visitors through different countries and times and introduce them to tea culture in China, Japan, and the Netherlands during the 17th and 18th centuries, England in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Netherlands during the 20th and 21st centuries.
The importance of social tea drinking and of the art of serving tea will be explored through 1,000 items and ceramic objects – sets, bowls and cups, teapots and tea caddies – used for serving and drinking tea.
Some of the highlights? Austere pottery of the Chinese Buddhists, the famous blue-and-white porcelain used by the Ming Dynasty elite, and large teapots from English sets. The event will also be accompanied by a series of events, lectures and guided tours.
The Rijksmuseum's Rijksstudio continues to be a great source of inspiration for creative minds all over the world.
A while back the museum joined forces with Etsy and there is currently an Etsy page available in which Rijksstudio introduces its digital images to use for Etsy.
You will find there some of the most interesting projects made so far by different designers inspired by carefully selected objects from the collection of the Rijksmuseum.
Norwegian Wood came up for example with a shirt and skirt inspired by a necklace from 1750, a lingerie set that moves from a marvellous cabinet from the mid-1600s with mosaic panels incorporating a selection of hardstones and semi-precious stones made in Florence at the Opificio delle pietre dure, and a kimono integrating sections of this cabinet and the painting "The Threatened Swan" by Jan Asselijn (c. 1650), with a fierce swan defending its nest aganst a dog (probably a political allegory as the white swan was thought to represent the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt protecting the country from its enemies).
Masha Reva cut out elements of "Still Life with Golden Goblet" (1640-1660) by painter Pieter de Ring, and printed them onto her white long sleeved dress, achieving a fun and original effect. The white dress looks indeed like a blank page on which a cheeky child applied colourful stickers.
Clara Apolit moved instead from "The Love Letter" (c. 1669-1670) by Johannes Vermeer, representing a domestic scene with an elegantly dressed woman and a maidservant handing her a letter, for the main palette in her knitwear.
There are also some intriguing examples of accessories: the batik motifs on the uniform of one official in the anonymous paintings "Five Javanese court officials" (1820-1870) provided Tovicorrie with original patterns for a calf skin leather clutch bag.
The Etsy + Rijksstudio page also includes shoes and jewellery. The only downside is that, after visiting it, you will be compelled to go online and end up spending hours checking some of the 150,000 objects from the collection of Rijksmuseum's Rijksstudio. But, in a way, that's a small price to pay to get such lovely inspirations…
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