Handcrafted Kujaku Table Lamp from Vintage Royal Delft

Kujaku (the word for peacock in Japanese) is a one-of-a-kind lamp lovingly handcrafted from a vintage, rare, hand-painted Royal Delft (De Porceleyne Fles) vase in Imari or “Pijnacker” (red, blue & gold or rood, blauw en goud) style. We’ve paired it with a custom contemporary lampshade in a royal blue ribbed velvet with a gold inner lining, made in an atelier near Amsterdam, and a matching royal blue cord. The vase base was made in 1968 and was hand-painted by Delft master painter, L.A. de Bloois. It depicts a lovely scene of a peacock in a garden near a lotus pond, surrounded by flowers.

In the second half of the 17th century, traders first brought Japanese Kakiemon and Imari porcelain to Holland. Inspired by its beautiful colours and patterns, it was copied by a few of the Delft factories beginning in the early 18th century. Some historians attributed the earliest Delftware in Imari colors to Adriaan Pijnacker, thus giving it is colloquial name. De Porceleyne Fles started producing it in 1902.

It is a gorgeous style that was very expensive to produce, since the red and gold paints could not be fired at high temperatures. So, while the blue paint was painted as an underglaze (as was usual with De Porceleyne Fles and other Delftware) and fired at a high temperature, the red and gold needed to be painted as an overglaze after the first glaze firing and the piece then needed to be fired a second time at a lower temperature. This second glaze firing, along with the gold paint that was used, which was made from pure ground 24 karat gold, made it 60-80% more expensive to produce than the normal Delfts Blue models. Because of the high costs, De Porceleyne Fles had to stop making pieces in the Pijnacker style in 2009.