WHY THIS BOOK?
Between 1914 and 1920, as the First World War raged across Europe, Royal Delft produced a quiet, thoughtful series of commemorative plates. They did not glorify battle. They did not celebrate victory. Instead they recorded the emotional posture of a neutral nation surrounded by war: vigilance, restraint, endurance, and guarded relief.
This book brings together the history, craft, symbolism, and market reality of those plates, alongside one collector's personal connection to them. Drawing on factory archives, decades of collecting, and life experience shaped by military service, the author traces how these ten plates became not just a set of objects, but a thread of continuity from his grandfather's Great War to his own Vietnam years and forward to his grandchildren.
Part technical reference, part historical study, and part personal testament, The Great War in Delft Blue is written for scholars, collectors, and future custodians who may one day find themselves asking:
What are these plates, and why do they matter so much?
