A Banquet Still Life

By 1622 the ships of the Dutch East India Company, founded 20 years earlier, were bringing Chinese porcelain into the Netherlands in quantity, and this table in Haarlem shows where some of it ended up. The blue-and-white bowls holding olives, sweets and curls of butter are Wanli ware, made for export under the Chinese emperor of that name. Near them stand a pale stoneware jug with a long spout, a Schnabelkanne of the kind made in the Rhineland, and a nautilus shell mounted in silver gilt as a cup, a sea creature from the East Indies turned into a showpiece by a European goldsmith. Floris van Dijck spreads it all over a white damask cloth edged with lace, laid over a red one, and adds small signs that the meal has started, a slice of melon, a knife, a spiral of peel hanging over the table's edge.