Delft Deco

More about Delft Deco

The room had been decorated by someone who believed empty space was a clerical error.

Delft blue climbed the walls, crossed the ceiling, slipped beneath the furniture and continued across the floor as though the entire house had been dipped into a seventeenth-century Dutch potter’s imagination and fired at an unreasonable temperature.

There were landscapes inside landscapes. Little cobalt villages occupied the walls. Ships sailed beneath chairs. Shepherds tended ceramic sheep under the sofa. A horse galloped permanently across the floor, making excellent time without ever reaching the carpet.

I sat in the middle of it all wearing black, which seemed the safest response.

The furniture had surrendered first. The armchair had become Delftware. Then the sofa. Then the table. Soon even objects that had no historical business being ceramic began acquiring blue pastoral scenes. A coffee cup contained a windmill. A vase contained another vase. That vase contained a landscape in which a tiny man appeared to be carrying a vase containing, presumably, the room I was sitting in.

This was Delft Deco.

Not Art Deco exactly. Art Deco knew when to stop.

Delft Deco regarded stopping as evidence of weak character.

Golden Churrigueresque vines crawled between the tiles, oranges hung overhead like small suns, and red curtains burned against the cobalt walls. Classical statues stood around pretending to bring dignity to the situation, although one had a magpie sitting nearby, which considerably weakened the argument.

Through an open doorway another room waited.

It was also Delft.

Beyond that was another.

Also Delft.

I began to suspect Holland had discovered a method of territorial expansion that required neither armies nor treaties, merely sufficient quantities of cobalt oxide.

Even the moon had been redesigned. It appeared in several places at once, flattened into decorative panels like an astronomical dinner plate. Outside, the Mediterranean had somehow wandered into the Netherlands. Cypress trees stood beside Dutch churches. A Venetian-looking harbor opened onto a tiled corridor. Geography had given up and gone home.

A cat crossed the doorway.

For one hopeful second it remained a cat.

Then it passed behind a vase and emerged looking suspiciously decorative.

That was when I understood the danger.

Delft Deco does not decorate reality.

It recruits it.

First the plate.

Then the wall.

Then the chair.

Then the room.

Eventually you notice a small blue-and-white picture of yourself painted on a tile near the floor: sitting in your armchair, contemplating a room containing another tiny blue-and-white version of yourself.

You lean closer.

The little fellow leans closer too.

And somewhere in Delft, four hundred years ago, a potter smiles and reaches for his brush.