Front Mould of a Virgin and Child (?), Fragment

Entry

In what was a flourishing field of artisanship in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, pipeclay moulds such as this were employed by simple craftsmen – the so-called beeldendruckers (statue-squeezers) or heyligenbackers (saint-firers) – to serially produce small figurines made of the same material.² The mould was formed around a pre-existing figure that functioned as a positive or a model made specifically for that purpose. In addition, pipeclay figurines could themselves be used as positives. Moulds procured in this manner, however, were subject to shrinkage and less sharply defined than the original model, thus resulting in ‘squeezes’ of inferior quality. Moulds were composed of two parts: a front and a back. First, a thin layer of wet pipeclay was firmly pressed onto the inner surfaces of the two halves of the mould, using a piece of cloth. On top of this first layer, a second, thicker layer of clay was then applied. Excess pipeclay was subsequently scraped off. Once the clay had sufficiently hardened, the two halves of the figurine were removed from the moulds and conjoined with wet clay to form a single piece. The resultant hollow figure was then baked in a pottery oven at a temperature between 990 and 1000°C until acquiring the desired hardness and creamy-white colour. Lastly, the figurines were often polychromed. Because popular models were reproduced over a period of many years, style offers only limited grounds for determining the precise dating of individual figurines.

This partly preserved front mould for a Virgin and Child was excavated in 1844 during the demolition of the Utrecht city ramparts near the Tolsteegpoort. The Virgin and Child figurines ‘squeezed’ from this mould are known as the ‘Utrecht Virgin’ type and date from circa 1425-50 (cf. BK-NM-11299 and -11300). During the same excavation, two other sets of front and back moulds for making this specific model were also unearthed.³ To maximize the production rate of saintly figures in high demand – among them the present model – workshops likely utilized multiple moulds. Utrecht was unquestionably an important centre for the fabrication of pipeclay devotional objects, as affirmed by the vast quantities of moulds, misfires and (remnants of) pipeclay sculptures unearthed there. More recent archaeological evidence, however, shows that the mass production of pipeclay sculpture also occurred in other cities, including Amsterdam, Leiden, Deventer, Kampen, Antwerp, Liège and Cologne.⁴ The white clay (known as pipeclay) used to fabricate these figurines was nowhere readily accessible in the Netherlands and had to be imported from the Rhineland in Germany and the Meuse region in Belgium.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024