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Katarzyna Przywoźna-Leśniak

On the Beginnings of the Fashion for ‘Delft Tiles ’ in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Wall Tiles in John III
Sobieski s Residences in Żółkiew, Jaworów, and Wilanów

Starting from the end of the 17th century and almost
throughout the whole 18th century, wall tiles
manufactured in the Netherlands were a popular
element of the European interior decor. They came
into fashion with the European aristocracy starting
with the Trianon de Porcelaine of Louis XIV, this
coinciding with the longstanding fascination with
Oriental china and the interest in Chinoiserie. In
Poland too the same type of interior decoration was
used, this testified to by the preserved facilities and
archival sources.
In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Dutch
tiles were used the earliest in the residences of King
John III Sobieski in Żółkiew, Jaworów, and Wila-
nów. As recorded by a French traveller, the royal
baths in Żółkiew, consisting of two pavilions, were
decorated with tiles already in 1688. From the
description of one of the bath pavilions made in
1743, it is clear that tiles covered all the walls of the
bathroom and fragments of walls by the fire-places
in the hall as well as in the room preceding the
bathroom.
In the 1680s, faience decoration was also put up
in the summer palace owned by the King in
Jaworów. ‘Fagfur’-tile-clad were as many as four
rooms: a study with ‘the ceiling painted sky-blue’
and as many as three rooms, of which one was the
‘residence’ of Queen Marie.
Although in the case of Żółkiew and Jaworów
the only source telling us of the faience decoration
are archival records, in Wilanów where the ceramic
decor of the ‘Fagfur’ Study has survived, the basic
information source is to be found in the existing tiles.
Having studied them, the Author realized that some
of them ranked among so-called Grauda tiles. When
comparing the Wilanów ones with the tiles of the
group in the collections of the Gemeentemuseum
Het Hannemahuis in Harlingen and Keramiek-

museum Princessehof in Leeuwarden, as well as
with the reproduced fragments of the decoration in
the sacristy in San Augustin Church in Cadiz, it is
possible to ascertain that the Wilanów genre tiles
were created in one of the Harlingen workshops in ca.
1690. Additionally, the remaining kinds of tiles are in
the Author’s view close to the products manufactured
in the last quarter of the 17th c. Thus when dating them
initially in ca. 1680-90, the Author supposed that the
landscape-motif tiles (landschappen op land) and the
ones with reiters were made in one of the Harlingen
workshops. Meanwhile, the 12-element panneaux
(present in four variants) with the motif of floral
vases in a floral border, tiles with Biblical scenes
{historie zonder tekst in cirkel), as well the ones
showing deities and sea creatures (zeewezens), came
from Harlingen or Rotterdam. Contrariwise, the
infrequent tiles with pastoral scenes, as much as
strongly resembling similar products from Harlingen,
are considered by the Author as later, possibly
manufactured in Utrecht. Bearing in mind the initial
dating of the tiles, as well as the mention in Paweł
Sapieha’s diary of 1694 (in which he defines one of
the first-floor palace chambers as the ‘study to the
right of the Dutchman’), it can be assumed that the
ceramic decorations were put in place in Wilanów in
the course of the last palace extension King John III
Sobieski carried out between 1686 and 1696.
The royal decorations in Żółkiew, Jaworów, and
Wilanów, are not only the earliest examples of the
use of the new decoration type in the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, but what is worth
emphasizing, the first in Europe, after the Trianon
de Porcelaine and the Chateau de Marly of Louis
XIV, palace premises with tile-clad interiors, thus
testifying not only to the inspirations and aesthetical
predilections of the individual who commissioned
them, but also to his status and aspirations.

Translated by Magdalena Iwińska