The year 2002 marked the 400-year anniversary of the founding of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The activities of this trading company had an enormous impact on Dutch history. Besides the obvious economic benefits, trade with the Far East left deep traces in the realm of material culture, as the many earthenware, porcelain and lacquer objects in private and public Dutch collections testify.
The four most important museum collections of Asian art are preserved in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Groninger Museum, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden. These museums have maintained a unique cooperation since 2002. The main purpose of this cooperation is to combine their expertise in the field of Oriental ceramics and to develop active exhibition and collecting policies. The four collections provide a unique and almost complete overview of the East-West interaction that shaped Dutch society until well into the nineteenth century. This website dedicated to ceramics is another result of the four partners desire to make their ceramic collections accessible to a wider public. The four museums organise a joint annual exhibition of Asian ceramics wherein objects selected from all of their collections are displayed. Recent exhibitions have included Kraak porcelain, funerary ceramics, European depictions on Asian porcelain, and Celadon.