RKD STUDIES

John van Collema’s origins were humble. He was born in Breda on 11 December 1652 to Dirck Collema (dates unknown) and Caterijna Claerens (dates unknown), who baptised him ‘Johan’ (later anglicised to John).¹ Both Dirck and Caterijna had died by 1662 when, at the age of nine, Johan and his brother Dirck (165?-before 1736) were admitted to the orphanage at Breda, where he trained as a chair turner.² On reaching adulthood, Van Collema left the orphanage with a small bequest of money from his aunt. He spent some time in Amsterdam, leaving in October 1676, bound for London. On arrival, he visited the Dutch Church at Austin Friars in the City of London and presented his certificate of attestation.³ It is likely that the church helped him to get established in his new home, and to forge connections with the Anglo-Dutch merchant families with whom he would later become closely involved.

The next few years are unclear, but it seems that Van Collema did not remain long in the City of London. His training as a chairmaker may have led him to the area around St Martin’s Lane in the West End of London, a locus for artists and craftsmen, where many Dutch chairmakers lived and worked.⁴ The first time we can be certain of his location is in 1684, when he is recorded as a rate- payer on Green Street, running off the south east corner of Leicester Fields, close to St Martin’s Lane [7]. Subsequently demolished and redeveloped, Green Street was in the approximate location of the present Irving Street. Van Collema occupied a medium-sized house on the north-west corner of the street.⁵ Here he established a business as a merchant-retailer specialising in India goods, principally imports from China and Japan. His earliest recorded customer is in June 1690, when John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol (1665-1751), noted in his diary the purchase of ‘a parcel of old china for dear wife’ from ‘John Van Colina’.⁶ Van Collema continued to trade from his Green Street premises until his death in 1737.⁷

The fortunate survival of a large number of Van Collema’s bills gives a rare insight into his business. The majority are made out to Elizabeth Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (1667-1722), wife of Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset (1662-1748), among the wealthiest and highest-ranking members of the late Stuart nobility [8].⁸ At least nine itemised and receipted bills, dating from 1692 to 1714, can be found among her personal papers in the Petworth House Archives.⁹ Queen Mary II herself was a customer (she also continued to patronise retailers in The Hague), and there is an itemised bill among the privy purse accounts outstanding at her death in December 1694.¹⁰ Another bill, from 1708, is made out to Thomas Wentworth, 3rd Baron Raby (1672-1739), later 1st Earl of Strafford, and another, from January 1718, is among the papers of Lydia, Lady Davall (1693-1750), later Duchess of Chandos.¹¹ Mostly written in Van Collema’s own hand, the bills list the goods purchased, the date of purchase, and the price of each individual item [9]. Together with newspaper advertisements advertising the sale of his stock after his death, they provide a great deal of information about the goods he offered and the shopping behaviour of his customers.

7
John Rocque and John Pine
A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark ​(1746)​ [composite image created from two of sheets]
London, British Museum, no. A,14.2-25

8
John Closterman
Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Percy (1667–1722), Duchess of Somerset, and her son, Algernon Seymour (1684–1750), Earl of Hertford, later 7th Duke of Somerset, c. 1690
Petworth (England), Petworth House, inv./cat.nr. NT 486184

Porcelain was the mainstay of Van Collema’s offering. Many of the items he sold related to the preparation and consumption of hot drinks, a social ritual in the upper ranks of society that necessitated appropriate equipment and expertise [10].¹² The items he sold were often small and relatively cheap, such as tea, coffee and chocolate cups at a shilling a piece, commonly sold in sets of six or twelve. Other hot drink paraphernalia for sale included teapots, basins, cream jugs and sugar boxes, typically costing between a few shillings and a couple of pounds, as well as lacquer tea tables, rattan or bamboo stands and lamp spirit. Van Collema also sold the tea itself (usually imported in the same cargo as porcelain), including fine, green, imperial bohea, and ‘milk’ varieties. Notably, he did not sell coffee, sugar, or chocolate, implying that he sourced his stock solely from shipments from South and South East Asia.¹³

Besides tableware, Van Collema sold a wide range of decorative porcelain, including bottles, beakers, jars and rolwagens (a Dutch term, signifying a tall, cylindrical, narrow-necked jar) [11]. Although some were priced at only a few shillings, others were very expensive, such as the ‘pair of fine large botles’ sold for £26-17-6 and two large China orange tree pots sold for £21-10-0 in May 1701.¹⁴ The large blue and white jar with a flat cover sold to the Duchess of Somerset for £17 in November 1700 may be one of the jars still at her country house, Petworth.¹⁵

Some types of porcelain were more highly esteemed than others, and Van Collema offered his customers the most sought-after pieces. As Patricia Ferguson has argued, a hierarchy existed within late-17th and early-18th-century porcelain, with collectors prizing ‘Japan China’ – Kakiemon-style Japanese porcelain – over the more widely-available Chinese porcelain.¹⁶ Within Chinese porcelain, antique wares were preferred to new items made for the export market, with those items in limited supply valued more highly [12]. The Duchess of Somerset’s largest purchase on a single occasion (15 December 1692) was 34 assorted bottles, beakers, jars and rolwagens described as ‘all old China’, sold for the enormous sum of £53; similarly the Earl of Bristol’s first purchase from van Collema was ‘a parcel of old china’.¹⁷ From 1700, the duchess began to purchase porcelain described as ‘painted in collers’ (probably indicating the Japanese Kakiemon palette) or ‘Japan China’ [13].⁴⁰ Her bill from September 1706 to June 1707 lists an especially large quantity of ‘Japan China’, which was generally in short supply.¹⁸ At the first sale of Van Collema’s stock, seven years after his death, the auctioneer’s advertisement highlighted the ‘great Choice of the fine old Japan [and] great Variety of the rare ornamental China’ that was available.¹⁹ It may have been these rarer and more highly-prized types of porcelain that particularly attracted Van Collema’s wealthy customers to his shop.

Besides porcelain, Van Collema also sold a range of lacquerware, art objects, small furnishings and personal items, the great majority of which were also imported from China and Japan. Lacquer cabinets and chests were among the most prized furnishings of the period. Van Collema sold ‘a fine Right Japan Cheste’ to Mary II for the large sume of £77, the term ‘Right Japan’ term signifying genuine Japanese lacquer rather than European imitation lacquer [14].²⁰ There were several ‘fine old Japan cabinets’ among his stock at his death, including one bequeathed to his friend Mary Liddell (dates unknown), described as ‘a right Japan cabinett and ffram on which is raisd work on the door of a cuffelo and Rider on the other door an India fashioned house’.²¹ ‘Raisd work’ suggests that this was Japanese lacquer, rather than the less-prestigious incised Chinese ‘Coromandel’ that had dominated the market since the early 1690s, when supplies of Japanese lacquer had largely dried up. He sold small lacquered items for personal use, such as the ‘Rt japan sett for a toylet’ sold to the Duchess of Somerset in May 1707 and the red lacquer standish supplied to Queen Mary in August 1694.²² Occasionally he stocked works of art. He sold ’20 long Indian pictures’ to the duchess in 1701, and among the goods advertised after his death were ‘three Chinese Bronze Figures, of excellent Workmanship, inlaid’.²³ Finally, Van Collema sold many different types of fan, at least some of which were imported from Asia, supplying them to Mary II and Queen Anne (1665-1714), as well as the Duchess of Somerset.²⁴

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China c. 1635-1650
Rolwagen showing a man offering a vase (tripod, jue) on a tray to a dignitary
porcelain, H 48 cm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

12
Bowl, Jingdezhen, China, c. 1600-1650
Porcelain painted in underglaze cobalt blue, H 7.5 cm, Ø 13.5 cm
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

13
Japan, Arita kilns, Edo period, c. 1700
Bottle, porcelain painted in overglaze enamels, H 29.8 cm, Ø 14.6 cm
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

14
Japan, re-worked by Gerrit Jensen in 1704-1705
Cabinet
Wood, black and gold lacquer, gilt bronze, 88.5 x 101.4 x 53.7 cm
The Royal Collection, RCIN 35274