Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic

Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic

April 12th, 2026 — 2:00pm–4:00pm

Free with admission. Program followed by a reception.

The New Netherland Institute’s director, Dr. Deborah Hamer, speaks with decorative arts specialist Genevieve Wheeler Brown, author of Beyond Blue and White: The Hidden History of Delftware and the Women Behind the Iconic Ceramic (Pegasus Books/Simon & Schuster, 2005). They will discuss the women in the Netherlands who made the ceramics, the women who brought it to New Netherland and New York, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors who championed it.

Selections of blue-and-white Delft objects from the Albany Institute of History & Art's collection will be on display.

In the fall of 2019, more than seventy-five rare pieces of 17th- and 18th-century Delftware were re-discovered in a historic Manhattan townhouse. Genevieve Wheeler Brown reveals the history behind this find in her book, which has been named an NPR Here & Now Editors’ Pick and praised by The Magazine ANTIQUES and The Wall Street Journal.

The talk highlights pioneering Delft pottery owners such as Barbara Rotteveel, founder of the Three Bells factory in 1671, and trailblazing Gilded Age collectors including Frances Tracy Morgan and Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt, whose preservation efforts helped shape early museum culture.

Through rich visual material—period objects and historic works of art—Brown looks beyond the cobalt glaze to reveal stories of artistry, female agency, and cultural history embedded in Delftware.

Brown’s book will be available for purchase. This program is co-sponsored by The New Netherland Institute.

As a decorative art advisor and writer with over thirty years in the art world, including a decade with Christie’s in New York and London, Genevieve Wheeler Brown has been active in the Delftware community. She has participated on Antiques Roadshow as an appraiser, keeping an eye out for overlooked “treasure.”

The New Netherland Institute is a registered nonprofit dedicated to preserving, digitizing, translating, and making Dutch documents related to the colony of New Netherland (1609–1664). Visit newnetherlandinstitute.org to learn more.