'Shocking fraud in Thailand with authentic Delft Blue'
In Lampang in the North of Thailand you can visit Indra ceramics.
Maybe the name Indra doesn't ring any bells yet, but they make ceramics there. Plates, cups, mugs, decoration, gifts and other hand-painted pottery. Now Indra (www.indraceramic.com) not a silly place with a few barns, but a complex that you say 'U' to. Some numbers to illustrate:
- Production capacity: 500.000 pieces per month or 250 tons.
- Revenue: 250 million baht ($8 million).
- Employees: 580 people.
- Market: 25% for the Thai market and 75% for export. Exports to the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and other EU countries.
Delfts blue
There is a shop and a large outlet store, where you can buy beautiful ceramics for a small amount of money. Even authentic Delft Blue! What did you say? Of course! Even Delft Blue. Our Dutch pride is made in Thailand. The famous decorative plates, vases, candlesticks and crockery, in that typical blue-white color, come from a factory in the north of Thailand.
'no pictures please'
Of course I wanted to immortalize 'my discovery', to write a story about it later. I started salivating at the thought of this revelation, a huge scoop of course, that would change life in innocent Holland forever. Peter R. de Vries, eat your heart out.
Note the Thai price stickerBut the Thai shop assistant saw the body floating and pointed me to a sign in the store: 'No picture please'. Then, at the risk of my life, I finally bought a Delft blue mug for 64 baht and paid for it at the cash register. After all, a bit of blogger doesn't just let himself be knocked out of the field.
Delft Blue conspiracy
Soon after, I looked under the mug, I made another startling discovery. And beware, this revelation will also cause a wave of outrage: we are being cheated. What are you saying again? I say we're being cheated. Because under the Delft blue mug it says that this drinking cup was manufactured by one 'Bosman'. And let's face it, who knows a Thai called Bosman? So I sensed in my water that something was not right. This Mr. or Mrs. Bosman has a company in the Netherlands (www.delftblue.com) and sells traditional Dutch hand-painted Delft Blue knickknacks, which do not have any Dutch smell. Have you ever eaten it so salty?
Of course I can support this bold claim with evidence that leaves even B. Moskofiets speechless. The photos are a bit blurry, because my hands were shaking with tension, you can probably understand that.
After this revelation I got a taste for it and have been working on a new study for a few years now. I can lift a small corner of the veil. An informant has informed me that the original Buddha statues of € 4,95 here at the local Blokker do not come from Thailand, but are manufactured in Delft. You will soon hear more about this dark affair that will make Watergate pale.
More photos of 'Thai Delft Blue' manufactured by Indra on the Facebook page of Thailandblog: www.facebook.com/Thailandblog.nl/photos_stream
Well, in the end the Dutch stole that whole 'authentic' Delft blue concept from the Chinese, of course.
Well, sad and I can well imagine the frustration of the writer. Unfortunately, it's no different. More than 75% of all the Delft Blue you see is produced in Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan. The only “real” bakery in Delft is still the Porceleijne Fles.
I have a collection of KLM houses, which were still produced in the Netherlands until 1995, but then also came from abroad (Singapore).
The history of Delfs Blauw is quite interesting, and it shows that this famous Dutch product was in fact already a "counterfeit" of Chinese porcelain.
The good news is of course that Bosman. Still has several hundred Thais at work for a not bad collection of Delft Blue.
Khun Peter, (or was it John, who discovered it?) I fear that a Peter R. de Vries, Scammed?, Wikileaks will show no interest and a complaint to the police in the Netherlands and certainly in Thailand will not be admissible .
@ I ended up not taking my mug to the Netherlands. I gave it to my girlfriend, so someone in the Isaan will now drink from a Delft blue mug.
I once also sent two of those porcelain Delft blue clogs to Thailand. These were also widely available at Indra, as well as ashtrays, windmill houses, etc.
If you're in the area, you should definitely check it out. There is a huge hall where you can buy beautiful ceramics for next to nothing.
On one of my first visits to Thailand, I thought I would bring something typically Dutch for my girlfriend: a Delft blue windmill. It was indignantly pushed aside, because presumably made in Thailand. The girlfriend has long since left, but I'm still stuck with that knick-knack.
About twenty years ago I visited the town of Solvang in California, 150 percent Danish. They also sold Delft Blue there, in large quantities. I assume that this typical Danish junk also came from Thailand, or elsewhere in Asia.
This cries out for a parliamentary inquiry. Identity theft of a friendly nation. Call back the Dutch ambassador. Send the Thai ambassador to Ned. back to Thailand. I say; sanctions!
Since, to my knowledge, no protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication (PGI) or guaranteed traditional specialty (TSG) applies to Delft Blue (and if that were the case, it would not apply to production outside Europe anyway) , it seems to me that the author of this article is treading on thin ice by accusing the producer of a criminal offense (fraud).
@Frans Amsterdam as a skating enthusiast I love slippery ice. The more the better 😉
@ Often the comments on an article are even funnier than the article itself. Kudos to the readers!
Criminal act? I don't see that anywhere. I think Frans himself is treading on thin ice by accusing the writer of a false accusation. Incidentally, I think that Mr Bosman understands that this article has been written with a wink.
Jewish cakes are also not imported from Israel
@ Not really? And nigger kisses not from Ghana? And Sinterklaas not from Spain? My world is collapsing today 😉
Do not worry. Saint Nicholas is really from Spain 🙂
Pfff…, okay thanks for these reassuring words. I really needed that.
Sorry, but the best good man is originally from Turkey... should I grab quick salt Khun Peter or will it work with a drink> 😉
haha I have been buying here for years and I bring bags with porcelain clogs, jugs and houses and give them away in BKK as a souvenir from NL and sometimes I take them to NL to give them to foreign acquaintances in Europe, haha
How funny that a Dutch national “unfolds this great scam”. Indra in Lampang is just a nice big tourist attraction and receives daily numerous busses full of tourists. Yes…. Many Dutch guys and gals too.
More funny is that Lampang is 'booming' just because of this kind of 'authentic' ceramics. Our company exports very high quality of “Delft Blue” and even famous “Fries pottery” to Holland since 1998. It's simple… Production in Holland is just too expensive and for many Years Dutch companies placed big orders in countries like Thailand and also Korea and Taiwan. So… Nothing new under the sun… But indeed. Fun it is.
I'll put some samples of “Real Delft Blue” and details of the production process including painting at facebook later. I believe that there is still some more information about this im-export product.
Sorry for English language, It's done because I like to mention this 'scam' also at Thai web boards.
Sawasdee tight, Wim
@ Wim, I've edited your post a bit too much advertising. You must also respond as a natural person and not with the name of your website or company.
Not much I guess.
Full containers arrive in Rotterdam, for which Dutch companies pay the normal import levy.
And after that? Hop into the trucks and vans. On to the shop windows around the dam, to Volendam and …. Yes… Schiphol. So you walk with your box of crockery, which has been carefully protected against breakage during the entire holiday and has been dragged from hot to her, past the shop in the middle of Schiphol's Asia pier.
See, I think that's funny.
Greetings from cold northern Thailand.
As a descendant of a family of which a large part spent years in the PZH, Regina and Goedewaagen, it hurts me to see this mess with a Dutch name on it.
Of course, the tourist junk that is sold in the Netherlands is almost all paste or filled in paste (for the uninitiated, a transfer is stuck on the biskie layer-baked clay and then filled in with the brush in rough strokes, or a screen print is applied to the glaze layer). pasted and then baked), and is made in low-wage countries, without really being able to speak of craftsmanship.
Any farm asshole can learn this pasting (decorists) and paint sweeping in a week or two.
The real craftsmanship, including designing, drawing and painting, takes quite some time before you can make nice pictures, let alone vases with lids, cabinet sets, wall plates and tile pictures.
But the article is nice.
But the blue is not craftsmanship, but real tourist junk.
Really hand-painted Delft Blue, I think there are still a few workshops where the real handicrafts are made, but you will notice that in the price.
All junk from non-European countries can be recognized by its color.
Real handicraft is fuller in color and a darker blue.
Responding to my own “submission:”
Madness at its peak.
Fun science is that the paint used on biskie is brown, and the paint wiped onto glaze is a very dark blue, almost black
Incidentally, the above mug is a mug with a swept-in relief.
Can't help it, that's what it's called.
I wouldn't want it in my house.
Incidentally, the comment that the production costs in the Netherlands are too high for the tourist junk was true.
With the new machines, developed in the Netherlands, no human is involved anymore during the pouring, turning, glazing, gluing and wiping.
Even stacking for the oven is done by machine.
The extraction is still human work.
Incidentally, most production of "Delft Blue" comes from Taiwan.
For really authentic Thai blue and white pottery, take a look in Sukothai. A few years ago I bought a high bowl and a vase with, among other things, fish on it that are really worth buying and displaying. You will enjoy watching it.
The "fake" quality radiates so much from it that there can be no question of a copy here!
This is not Delft blue; pure fake and recognizable as such.
Even Villeroi and Boch sells beautiful pottery neatly packed in boxes in its outlet. V&B had only forgotten to remove the sticker “made in Taiwan” from the packaging. If that wasn't enough, Gouda cheese from Poland is sold throughout Germany.
A copyright on Delft blue is of course impossible for God. We have already cheated millions of Dutch people by selling Delftware. Delft blue does not exist! That is illegal counterfeiting of a Chinese product. They too have been making this for many hundreds of years.
By the way, how long is a copyright valid, if there is one in China at all? ? ? 40 years ago you saw hundreds of Chinese with a camera in the Netherlands a year later our developments came from China. People shouldn't whine like that. How many illegal DVDs and Computer CDs do we take with us from Thailand, for example. Why should a blue vase from Delft cost 450 euros, while the same vase made in Thailand only costs 300 Baht. (=7,50 €)
Who has scandalously enriched himself with this? The man behind the workbench in Delft, I don't think so !!! Or his boss with a third house in the Bahamas. If I like a vase I buy it for that reason alone. Who made it and how it was made is beyond me. What it costs is also not important.
If I like it, and if I'm willing to pay the asking price for it, that's the only criteria
Greetings Jan