Domestic Interiors at the Cape and in Batavia 1602-1795

Hardcover. English. Waanders Uitgewers. 2002. 240 pages with black & white and colour illustrations,As New.

Beautiful coffee-table book on furniture from the Dutch East Indies and the Cape in relation to each other focussing on 17th & 18th century domestic interiors

The book came about as a result of the exhibition' Domestic Interiors at the Cape and in Batavia, 16021795 ' and is the first to examine the domestic interiors and furniture of the Dutch adventurers and fortune seekers who settled in Batavia (todays Jakarta, Indonesia) and at the Cape in South Africa during the time of the Dutch East India Company (16021795). Being held at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the exhibition and this accompanying publication marked the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the 350th anniversary of the establishment of a Dutch settlement at the Cape, and offer an unprecedented opportunity for an overview of the development of the domestic furniture in expatriate Dutch communities at the most southerly tip of Africa and in the Far East. 

Although South Africas Cape was an important staging post for merchant ships on their way to the Far East, no attention has previously been paid in the Netherlands to the subject of the domestic interiors of the VOC outpost here. So extreme is the neglect that no Dutch museum possesses a single example of Cape furniture. This exhibition and publication constitute a serious attempt to correct this indifference. Some fifty exemplary pieces of Cape furniture from public and private collections in South Africa had been shipped to the Netherlands especially for the exhibition, allowing for a virtually complete overview of the development of Cape furniture.

The Dutch presence at these two strategically important points in trade with the Far East led to the development of two completely disparate styles of domestic furniture in both form and decoration.